Everything from her Mouth

Everything from her mouth

I wrote down in a blue book.

I wrote down her eyelashes

and silences and her dreams

when she slept. I did this for

so many years my fingers

were glued into the book.

Now you know me she said

and as she spoke a strong wind

came up and blew me I knew not

where. The book’s pages scattered

into strange countries no one

had ever heard of. I later

learned women in tropical fields

planted these pages in the

earth and thus the world came

to know cucumbers, radishes,

even those red new potatoes

we are all so fond of.

2.

The women of the fields

sailed the seven oceans of

the green earth. They were

marooned on a thousand dark

isles where, with nothing else

to do, they discovered they

had been impregnated by

the same dark man. The same

dark man had done the same

to their mothers in a distant time.

They felt this, and were horrified

by the absence of any hot proof

to bring before the authorities.

Destiny, the fate of our children,

were the words one heard. Coffee

prices plummeted, which led

to rioting among the natives

and a lot of loose talk that

we hear at night when sleep

is uneasy and our minds

can only think of fire drills which

sounded at the most unlikely hours

and we were left shivering

in the schoolyards until higher-ups

determined we had been punished

enough for one day.

Carlos was the dark man’s

name. But he had as many names

as the coffee bushes had beans.

He had sixteen names for each

hour in the day, and wore baggy suits

made from the earrings of every

woman he ever loved. The sun

had made him dark. His teeth

were pearls strung to whatever

length lips desired. He had

begun in clover, a horn

by each ear, which his women

clung to when lust whipped

their bones into other worlds.

He calls nightly to a blue dog

rumoured to exist though never

seen, yet the bowl every morning

emptied, always the blue face

in pans of bubbling water.

Sometimes I wonder would

it have been better had I never

wrote down her words in the

blue book. I could have spent

my life far more profitably,

and bought myself lots of hats

and shoes and walked in the

rain any time the mood struck

me.

Rain is upset. It has got its boots

wet. It fears it will come down

with something. It would seek shelter

if shelter did not provoke such

nightmares. He and the Missis have

had a spat. She follows the trade

winds: Mexico, the Carribean. She’s

only home to bicker.

A podge of nuns in Denver was auctioning off shoes

from their very own feet. Such dainty feet and each recently

pedicured. Come to my show, Britney told them. I want you sitting

right up front. I’ll buy you an orphanage full of starving kids.

It’s right that we all should live in this world without hindrance

to the stalwart initiative.

The shoes that night were strung by wire the length of the stage.

The nuns were enraptured. It was not themselves they saw walking.

They clapped heartily. The shoes were doing extraordinary

things they’d never done while on their own feet. One Sister

wept. The inevitable, she was heard to say, is so long coming.

The other nuns shooshed her. Always there was a brainy Miss

spoiling the fun.

Britney interviewed applicants for the new orphanage. The line

stretched from Denver to the next town. She was wary. She wasn’t

about to let bogus orphans occupy her beds. Her throat hums a

quiet excitement. She imagines this must be how people used

to feel when contemplating a proposal of marriage to someone

they are sure has hidden flaws, such as insanity running in the

family. That long-ago day in the rain when her aunts discovered

her singing they had looked dreary as lamp posts on a grey day.

You don’t want to be thought of as callous, someone said. How

was she to know a dear uncle had died? It has struck her that

this deal could cost her pots of money. The barefoot boy before her

is tearful. I never said anything about buying these children shoes,

she’s telling the nuns. I can’t see why at least some of them can’t

have brought their own silverware.