Fugue in F-Major, Ending in a Sonnet

I know it's cliche to have a thing for musicians
But let me just say...I have a thing for musicians.
Cause, you know, someone puts their mouth just right on a reed
It makes sense, that's a mouth that knows what you need
Yeah, give me a woman who plays flute or oboe
Cause she knows how to puff up her cheeks and blow
And you cannot underestimate the importance of rhythm
Your own metronome going to tick tick tick'em
It takes patience and attention to know
When it's time to kick it up and time to decrescendo
Because let's be honest, ladies: timing is everything
Ain't nothin' offbeat gonna make your bell ring
And if you want a love to produce a volcano
Set me up with a friend who plays the piano
It's a quick damn trip from sonata to bed
I think Tori Amos put it best when she said:
The piano is a passionate instrument... a sensual instrument, and, um,  you can hide men in it
... So there's that
You want to seduce me? Start in Bflat
Stretch out those hands, and honey you are golden
Cause nothing works faster than Asharp to F7
It's about running your fingers over the right keys
That's pretty much all it takes to make me week in the knees
Cause there's something beautiful, both aural and visual
About playing percussion on my favorite triangle
And I promise when I say this, I'm not trying to be porn-y
But who can resist when a woman gets French horn-y
And oh, heaven help me, if she's got a harp to pluck
Those fingers moving so fast, I just wanna...have a conversation with her
And the cello, sweet Lord, do I even have to say it?
It's shaped like a woman and you gotta open your legs to play it
Oh and one more, I realize it's common
But there's this woman that I have my eye on
And I, so often, wish that I could
Be made of only strings and wood
And have her hands begin their trek
Pressed lightly at my arching neck
And make a slow but steady trail
By working down my major scale
So stringed melodic I would croon
And then my eyes to her eyes tune
That nothing could be so easy
For a bright minstrel, such as she
To wrap her arms around my hips
And strum me with her fingertips
And I would find it bliss by far
To be but used as her guitar

Feast of St. Erzulia

Let the wind carry this sound up and far,
From my lungs and yours, the yes
Of bees' wings thrumming
And orchids trumpeting delirious with color

You were never meant for oubliettes
Or fainting couches, but for dancing
In wide places (how you shine, flossy thing!)

And free, now you are
From the dread of needles and prongs
And grave-faced doctors,
Let us chew up our orders and
Steal napkin weights, and try all manner of magic,
And in the beats of the pounding bass, know
We were made for the swell

Will

I leave you the cottage,
the book about fungi, and the broom.
The goat with her ruthless teeth
will belong to you also.
I leave you better sense than your mother had,
the deck of cards, the herb garden,
the tea kettle and cups,
and the rabble of people who do not like witches,
but who will brave the brambles
hoping you have a remedy
hidden somewhere, maybe under your shoe,
in your cupboard, or in the escargatoire in the root cellar.
Which reminds me, I leave you, too,
the cupboard and the escargatoire.
And the root cellar.
Yours the roughened hands and the logolepsy.
Yours the prescient dreams, the beeswax candles,
and the will to deliver, no matter the hour,
whatever must come bleeding and squalling into this world.

Don't forget to feed the goat.

Selkie's Girl

Mam used to tread on seashells in our house, with feet that
never quite fit her. Only later would I see how she was meant to move.

Once I woke in the small hours and felt her gone. Peering
across the strand, I saw her kneel by the waterline. She drew clawfuls
of sand and flung them out, baying and barking
from her throat. The moon made an oil slick
of her skin, a wildness she could not give me. 

She wept when I asked her to teach me
to swim. "Little thief," she said, "Don't you know
that seashells are bones?" I knew, but I wanted
her to cast me in skin. I wanted my hair to knot
like hers, like seaweed. I wanted my body to look
like hers, the roundness of her womanself,
the damp and furry places. "Foolish child," you will say
and you will not be wrong, for I was the thief
whose love trapped her here, the thief that freed her, too.
I could not look like her if I tried. In hungrier times, I make
the same moaning sounds, barking like questions she will not answer. 

Lately I feel the stirring of wildness
Mam left behind. You will tell me, and you will not be wrong,
to find the seed of that wildness and seal
it in. But if I cannot go back to the sea
as she did, I will spend the rest of my life learning how.

The Bird Nest in the E

There was a Texaco station
at the first stoplight out of our neighborhood.
Vivid capital letters across a black ribbon
advertised fuel to us and free housing, we would learn,
to others. Our mother saw it first,
the nuisance of twigs protruding from the lower
lip of the second letter. Not the cozy O,
nor the safe triangle of the A, nor even
the the protected valley of the X, but
the narrow slat of the E. The
sparrows abiding there had chosen a home with a ledge.
It swiftly became the fashion for all
present 5- to 11-year-olds to declare,
"The bird nest in the E!" upon the passing
of any Texaco station. Bonus points
if you said it first. And my mother,
whose ears had been used to exclamations
far more grating, would only blink her patient eyes,
knowing she had hinted to her children
at the unpredictable gifts of occasionally looking up.

Salt Dissolves

This inchoate dream I had

was sprinkled into warm water. White, 

iodized grains lilted and settled on the bottom.

I wanted to taste the salt on everything. 

I lost it, split lip dripping. 

(I should know better, I should know better.

It was never going to be the sort of undertaking

I could waltz up to on a whim.)

The ocean rolls into my mouth.

Among the jellyfish, reef sharks, brittle stars, limpets,  

the taste is still there, changing the water.

Spilt dreams tossed over my left shoulder,

they brace me, balast against the incalculability of the sea

and the un-alonest I will ever be.

Season for Osmanthus

At home this very minute
the sweet olive is flowering,
turning the air heavy and heady (how
did you get so sticky with want?)

Stay outside too long and you
get drunk on it, go zigzagging
through the neighbors' yard and avow

you will sleep in the grass
because you want to keep smelling that smell
until the small apocalypse of the dawn

Approach the sweet olive tree directly
and you can't smell a damn thing
because redolence is a gift
(so sidle, breathe, wait)

Meanwhile you expand,
hippy as a rosebud and just as knockout
I could spend days in awe

of your melliferous mouth
as we wait for the breeze to bring us sweet olive
(a secret
that flies to the corners
of your mouth and turns them
slowly
upward)

Sufjan Interjects Again

What makes a belly good is not its girth
—sneezing the sneeze of short snouts—
Or its ability to be disguised by an empire waist
—snorfling into my armpit—
But whether you can lay with it exposed
—careening through patches of tall grass —
Inviting adoration or showing submission
—nearly rolling off the bed or stairs—
And either way trusting the flesh to be exactly enough
—closing alien-large eyes to better feel
the relief of short nails on furry, imperfect skin.

Mercy of the Clarinetist, Libations to the Glass

Lauren was patient as a fern.
She did not even laugh when I said the sadness felt like a cylinder of frozen peas,
But made me sit with the thing so plain I couldn't make a metaphor of it.

That's what was left after I hurled glass bottles into a concrete wall,
Hoping the itch would leave my golgothan hands.
Some of it did, but glass shards lurked in the weeds
And I could not gather them all.
It's the kind of cold that burns, I said. Not the comfortable cool
Every Louisiania-born fat woman longs for from March to October.

What clenches in my abdomen, what leaves long red marks
On my face when I wake in the morning
Is the loneliness of the small, round, hard things you microwave
When there is no one else to cook for.

Dare, Columbine

Pierrot, do not give me another damned rose.

I will not have it, sir.
Enough of unassuming sweetness.

If you turn toward the waxing moon and sigh one more time

I will smack you about the face.

Come instead, and sneak into this cemetery with me.
The resting souls there will not mind us, I promise.
They won't even notice if we tell dirty limericks,
Or, flat on our backs, look up the stone angel's nose.
And from there it is an easy distance to saying secrets and kissing.

I have always preferred you,
But I do not want to sit so long in silence.
Be daring, Pierrot, and use your mouth.

Speak, clamorously if you must.
Let's vandalize the night
With our clanging shouts to God.