Fire Raising: Los Angeles, Somewhere in the 90’s
I. Herbarium
Santa Anas rising, another morning
whistles in through cracks in our walls and windows,
and I rise too from my desk--abandon
the page I’ve been struggling over, something about
summer mornings and being happy to lie
together, slippery like tangled plants curling
around this sweltering greenhouse--
I rise too with a burning in my back
and hands stained black to don the costume
of this love and walk the dog as you sleep on.
Out in the wind and unmowed grass--We’ll break
up the surfaces of sprinkler run-off
puddles glassy and pink from the rising
sun’s modest blush emerging beyond
the hills. Is this freedom? Missing
the point, you’d say I’ve always been free.
Now back in our greenhouse, the air, thick
as heat, sucks up all moisture,
suffocates, and this wall of windows our Century
21 agent sold us on
spares no living thing. First to go,
your daffodils died. Now as we overlook
our immense city in bloom in dust and smog,
overlook even a distant downtown
where buildings are the mangled cacti of some mythic
mirage, everything dies. And now as I look
in the mirror, searching for a new shade
of lipstick, it dawns on me--
But we’re due so soon at your mother’s
for the fitting, then a family brunch. . .
She has
a gift for me--Bromeliads are hearty
plants, good for under-waterers like me.
This one will survive. I am sure. You leave.
We talk about women’s things. She laments,
I always wanted a girl, then grants,
now I’ll finally have one. But, as the pins
graze my skin, I’m thinking about the plant.
I always thought it was vermiliad.
It just seems to be more fitting to me,
like a vermilion exclamation point.
But soon it will lose its fire; the flaming
wand only lasts so long then falls
away. She interrupts to say
I’m pretty in my dress, this mess of taffeta
and rayon. It falls too long, but she’s too
far gone to see: you and me
too in love to be together. I’ll peel
the prickly dress off before preparing
brunch, wash my hands after handling the feta
so everything stays clean and nice for you.
Still, too-soft cucumbers resist
my knife, and I skin a thin layer from my thumb:
blood spreads across a white kitchen
rag, like flames. No matter, mine’s
not the first blood to ruin a meal, and Greek
salad was never your favorite anyway:
foul peppers, warm onions, the heat
of august. . . You know, the pavement looks cool
down below, like snow packed tight.
II. Firewalk
I am awake again and watching you.
I have watched you sleep for years. Your breath moves
slowly through your body then drifts outside
the window to the balmy black and blue.
Each night it comes and goes the same. The day
will come in less than a minute and I
will your eyes to open. But you don’t wake.
Outside the sun, full and heavy, struggles
to rise above the city, and the buildings,
coals tossed over a fire, hold the day
down a while. But it’s never long enough.
The earth shines and gleams as dawn’s about to burst.
My feet and legs uncovered shake.
I’m half ready to walk, half ready to wait.
~~~
I am a daytime sleeper. You mistake
it for indolence. When you call from work
at lunch--something about caterers,
florists--I’ll be sleeping, dreaming of red,
glowing coals, smoke swirling up to the black
sky, not a star in sight. I am no longer
afraid in the dream. I know the journey
across the bed of flames will free me.
Last night, I looked down from our balcony
and saw the lights of a traffic jam on
the boulevard below, and I saw
the warm flickering of an accident
written across white-hot building faces.
How I longed to glide across the embers.
~~~
Well, tonight I chose a different dress, and lipstick
to match--both vermilion like my plant.
I guess I was feeling a little bold.
My tongue, now painted black from too much wine,
black like my charcoaled eyes, is loose. The words
finally come, filling up the silence
between us, spreading across the vast white
pavement as we make our way home.
How should I now speak the unspeakable?
Whatever the words, stained lips unseal
and sear this moment, brand its landscape
with an indelible good-bye. It’s done.
And still midnight’s glimmering city lights burn on
till morning’s fire erupts across the sky.
III. Balk
Coming home with a cineraria
that’s already begun to wilt, I think
perhaps I was better off when someone
shared this death, this life of dying things--Oh,
I miss you, my misery. . .It’s shedding
season again and I am allergic
to my own dog--or maybe just the dust
that never gets swept up. Yes, time to shed.
But I can stand change less than I could stand
you, and I’ve got the scars to prove it:
For months I ‘ve pruned and watered, pruned and pricked
my palms with twigs and thorns. Still everything
I own, every new plant on my balcony
withers away. You’d laugh as nothing stays.
So, I do my spring cleaning at sundown, start
with the closets and think that after you
left, I had not lost a husband but gained
so much closet space. The joke is on me.
This place is a mess, my cleaning has proved
unsuccessful when a puzzle catches
my eye. This one’s Home Interiors. We
assembled it together just after
Underwater World and before Desert
Sands. Dust flies, my nose runs. What if
I put it back together? I open
the lid. See? The lilies stand still, alone,
the only survivors left after--ha!--
the break up, the only pieces I did
not take apart. Beautiful, greedy things!
They will stay dignified there, forever
sucking up the liquid that surrounds them,
but will never drown them. They’re fine without
the rest: warm brown hues of the house, deep
green of the garden outside the window.
But they forget who made them. And I
forget everything and sleep. . .
Strange weather
we’re having. The news says it’s all just right,
though out of season for brush fires. No doubt
some maniac in love with rage struck a match
and set all of California ablaze.
It’s been burning all morning while I slept.
Oh well, soon enough the trees will grow back
rich and green. (I’d never seen Malibu
so lush as after the fires a few
years back.) Life lies dormant beneath the black
then rises again. My own fire-plant--that lone
bromeliad your mother gave me--thrives.