Self-Portrait as Mutant We fear the fidgeting of GMOs, spider DNA in the corn, crab DNA in the goat milk. One by one our genes are ticking off and on, dazzling broken Christmas lights, deciding: green eyes for this baby, an extra rib for that one. Magic powers, a maybe. Born with mutations you might not see,…
was a strand of scenic overlooks.
I first wrote strange
—a strange of scenic overlooks—
my mistake, and strange enough was everything bathed in the red Mars dust of Sedona, the iron in the rocks aligned with iron in our blood, they say, so it tugs on us. It tugged. Every night on Airport Mesa, a crowd gathered and the Milky Way made a white mess of the sky. Was I the only one who’d wanted to polish it black again? Our honeymoon was a scene of stranded overlooks. We posed for panoramic photographs minus the photographs. Behind us the canyon was banded red, copper, purple
—millions of years
of compressed sunsets—
where the river had gnawed down to bone, down to its strange, scenic marrow.
The soybean fields flooded and froze over,
and the boys—not yet their father’s sons, not yet
worrying about crop stubble beneath the ice—
skate, twilight settling in their hair,
until their mother, watching at the window,
calls them in for supper. When it’s dark
they’ll sit elbow-to-elbow at the worn farm table
each son will want when she’s gone,
ringing spoons against the sides of bowls,
that silver-on-ceramic note. But now they glide
across the ice, not yet worrying about surfaces
that barely hold them, and there is nothing
between them and their mother but the clear
syrup of old glass. It moves so slowly, no one sees.
Beloveds, I keep picturing it
this way: we’re standing, all of us,
between the Bear and every creature
the Bear calls prey, and half of us
step aside. Half of us aren’t enough
to hold the Bear. It lumbers,
then, in a blur of claws and mange,
charges through. What did you think
would happen? The Bear would lose
its appetite? The Bear might be tamed
with a tiny bicycle, a propeller hat,
a gold sphere to balance on its nose?
I don’t need to describe what happens
next: the smell of blood, the surprise
of white femur. Ones I have called
beloved, I keep picturing you
this way: sitting off to one side,
watching the Bear work, waiting to see
if it leaves any meat on the bones.
Pearl Dagnall doesn’t need somebody to love, and she’d tell you—if she ever talked to people offline—but interfacing is a problem for her. She has a limited tolerance for people in general, which is why she telecommutes. She has zero interest in romance with any of Facebook’s fabulous fifty-eight genders, and that’s the tip of the…
parable of the
honeycomb:
accretion of labor,
queen at the height
of her powers,
pulse of the
hive audible, warm
aura of affirmation.
waterfowl, birdcall,
houses sleep
as ravens gather
morning
to weave
wings
with sky.
mute,
believers scatter
ashes—
witness to
plundered flesh.
bones in the earth
echo,
sun bathes
the surface
of water
in light.
lagoon, a cradle:
water lilies poise
for painting—
the illusion of stasis
where life sings:
the resurrection
and the light.
hillside in
shadow. roots
gather energy,
a poplar's nimbus
glows.
buds sparse
but insistent
in early spring.
herons clamor
over the late.
a pilgrim's
new continent:
ocean of waving
grasses,
the weight
of vast spaces,
silence.
remember
the western
fires, sky ablaze
with the desire
of destruction,
(retribution:
ashes to ashes)
how we saved
what we could,
nothing more.
a sudden implosion and then nothing
but tunnels covered in bone dust
a hawk with a human grin looks down
as I pick up coins I’d buried in childhood
they smell of oak/smoke/pumpkin seed/
my mother’s hands showed how much she worried
the form of her fears a tiny beast: black and shiny/
tops of wheat wave as the wind shifts clouds
and the moon comes out prematurely/
the dying sun is a month’s worth of blood
smoothed on canvas/hillside in shadow/black stamens
alert, petals a yellow warmth/birdcall blooms—
waves of sound—a refrain evoking prayer/earth an edifice—
its backbone a witness—a barnful of solitude/your unholy
absence an artifact/we could not save us/gather the sea
faithful angels, the yellow stars/it is time I become who I am
We ate rabbit for dinner.
This story saddened me most of all.
Cynthia the psychic asks: How have you gotten this far with one oar?
Old Miss Tilford pulled books out of a battered, upholstery bag like a good witch.
Any story would do.
In school I believed a thin, gruel-like self propped up by the alphabet.
I stopped responding to my name.
They thought I could not hear them but I could.
You are one of the watched ones, she adds.
I became my mother’s story, unable to respond to myself as she could not respond to me.
Valium’s lovely blue notes became my lullaby.
Cynthia in her ballet slippers dances in the airy loft between readings.
Halifax is full of parables of drowning.
When there I spoke in a language heard only by the dead, found words in an old can by a
chips wagon and began again, my past as loud as silence in a Bergman movie.
The tale of recovery does not end.
My life remains narrowed by what I can’t accept.
So much depends on who does the telling.
I dream spring, a long life, fear I will be loved.
Who is
watching who
deserves to be
