Literary Enclave:
Poetry Zone

My breasts are palm-sized hemispheres, 
relief maps of the mountains of my heart, 
with faint green rivers where travel the run-offs of love, 
and flowers that overwhelm the summits, 
blooming and fading in seasons of lust. 

This is the center of my heart, 
the sternum's grief point, this valley. 
This is the place on the map of me 
where I was held down with a knee, with the heel 
of a hand by my professor, 
my boyfriends, my boyfriend, my brother, 
my mountains trampled by bootsoles like weeds. 

I have to tell you this about the country 
where my heart is planted in bones. 
I have to tell you 
I can't bear more weight here 
where I'm buried in my body 
with what happened. 

Fishers of sun 
stand in tongue-shaped boats 
at Pondicherry. 
Through salted air 
into pewter water they cast 

Aurobindo's prayer: 
"Only the pure in soul 
can walk in light." 

Dawn holds its coming. 

They breathe with the waves. 

And then first sunlight-- 
a gold tear, 
over the eye of Earth. 

You asked me why I wanted you. 
You told me you were too old 
to be wanted the way I did. 
You said you had no children to give 
and that the fresh pool of my body 
would surely want children. 
You told me I was too young, 
that you thought you could break me in two. 
And I said to you 
if I am a pool I will not break 
and I will wash around your breaking part 
and I will hold you gently 
as my own child 
in the cradle of my wanting. 

i. asana 

In the rice paper light, 
risen, inhaled, tremolo, 
a sailing of lungs. 
The flesh goes aloft too, 
fuzz on your limbs light 
as the fringe of wheat 
on a July morning. 

ii. balance 

As a wreath of supplejack 
around a youngling maple 
will hold all season 
despite snow's weight, 
you abide the phone's 
clamorous beckoning, 
din of pans concussed 
with burners, sometimes 
a fervid, hormonal sob, 
and the holy smell 
of these labors, 
your breath dormant, 
swallow shunted 
wrapped in a singing of gravity. 

A piece of my mother's breast is out in the ether, 
what she grew young and held in her palm like a new bauble,

what nursed my brother, where my earaches were pressed 
and rocked, lullabied, dusky-voiced, 

while the halo of country dark fell. 
Maudlin and pale red anemones in the toilet 

hover and sag with the wind through the pipes through the well. 
I see her slumped at the table while her children pat her arms 

and she says, "Oh God, I'm just sick of it today." 
Another time, I see her drop the peeler, grip the edge of the sink. 

My father's not home yet and I have just told her 
I've started shooting up and I can't stop and she says, 

"We borrow these bodies, Daughter." 
And then, again, I imagine I see her 

holding the phone against her face 
in the germ of that morning when she says 

"It was cancer, Anna," and her face 
is an orchid, open and smooth, 

prepared. 
There are no trembles in this piece that's gone, 

no taut shivers from the brush of a hand. 
A piece of my mother's breast is in orbit 

around my life. Any year now it will appear 
in my hand and grow dense as the undergrowth

in the orchard that grew until we could no longer 
step through to get the berries. 

There are still a few things left, 
still my mother's turquoise honeymoon nightgown 
wrapped around a collection of seashells, 
still the painting of the black-haired woman 
hauling herself by her hands through the field 
while her legs follow numbly 
toward the farmhouse in the upper corner, 
still the red and yellow cushions of the couch 
we nestled into for our naps, 
and still all the things I heard 
called down the hardwood hallway 
that everyone says they never said. 

Barefoot, sharp smell of fresh-cut planks 
and stirred up orange juice, 
all the pitchers of animosity 
forming and falling like pots on a wheel. 
I don't know where I can make what I want to make 
out of these recipes. 
In which kitchen can I become the one 
who puts the damp towel over the rising loaves? 
There is no sudden finding that matches that authentic treasure 
of her kissed cheek gleaming in the morning beside the sink 
while he gears the car down the driveway, 
heads for work.