Upwards of a million people live in the single square mile of gulley and track called Kibera. The number is staggering. Almost inconceivable. Each face, each flooded trench, each rusted corner of corrugated tin multiplied again. And again. And again. How do we count past a few dozen, a hundred or so at the upper end? A family, a clan, maybe a gathering of the tribes. Beyond that, names bleed into one another. Their associated lives press down in shifting layers, superimposing, becoming indistinct. How do we remember who matters to us? Who is dangerous and who is a friend? Who belongs to whom?
Who counts?
Seven thousand miles over land and sea, the plane circles in on our city. From above, we place the river, a muddy shadow like an erasure through a canvas of lights. We see the photo negative of our home. Black through gold, we mark our coordinates and draw a frame. That must be west. One fishnet stocking hugs the cool leg of a monument that never fails to center our gaze and still the spinning needle.
Nestled between strands of gemstone necklace and glittering beam is our chosen address. The place is our belonging, both the what and the where of our claim. The shadow there, between bridge shiver and engine thrum, is ours.
Both our heads turn the same way. We peer as if of single vision, contriving sharp edges despite mar and blur through the pressurized plastic window. It does not crack no matter how hard I push.
Which I won’t.
I won’t.
Instead, days later, I look up. Up from the teeming ground. From my open-breath, 5000 people-per-square-mile home. These cards in my hand, the luck of the draw. I lift my eyes up from the latticework brick that forever buoys my well-shod feet even when so heavy they fall, and catch
silver glint against blue, the sun cracking hard against the place I dared not lean
and look backwards through leagues of sky to the soft underbelly of cloud. Look further still, through the scuffed plexiglas pinhead. There, a fleeting fortune. 11D, E, F. An accident of place.
From this distance I still see you tucking around me like one.
One and one.
One whose face in any crushing riot, any burning land, I seek. One who counts
as ordinal first. One I count
on to draw in light
and its absence the improbable land
of us.
Category: Love
Junction
Rib under its sheath of skin holds the level
crossing up for working liver, bustling
spleen to scrub and build and pack
cargo for the journey. Beneath, a churning. Steady.
T for the Tillerman
Under the mast of sleep, night breathes
through weave, teasing down
in spots and whispers
on heel, bow, on back of knee. His agile hands
press lids and lash
the barrel stays, these ribs
a sturdy frame
that hasn’t buckled yet. Just above
the place my spine
draws across ocean’s verge
a horizon line, the cumulus parts. Stars consolidate
and then disperse making constellations
of text we feign to understand
as we flounder in the dark.
He fixes our place with sextant and connects
the dots. Contours on the map
of me begin to align, his fingertips
hinting at sentience. Order. At something more.
He marks the way
in code and my skin stirs
as it recognizes an R
or perhaps a D.
Where did I drift? Is that a V?
I missed a passage, I want to say. Go back.
The tide is strong. It drowns
out speech and weighs down my cheek
with sand. I don’t yet trust his touch
to chart our course and so in hush I try
to decipher the braille he makes
on me. That shape feels
like an eel trace. A silent S?
Eight? Infinity? He could tip us
over the edge of a forever
Mobius strip
yet I give way
because sleep ties its rigging
to my eyes and draws the knots
in tight. He writes on
the starboard side as I list
roughly north. Strokes across
a restive sea
shape incantation in argot I may have known
before the paired mitochondria
we were
parted ways. 43 million years we have skimmed
the planet’s skin seeking
a lost shape and song, seeking
the only tongue
matched
to the task of whispering tattered lyrics
back together. An erasure
now, a rumble like mirth. From my lumbus
he wipes away
a what? Mistake? A risk
reconsidered? Still, he writes on.
Rough beams of me
soft from so long in salt
air give way to the press of his stylus
and bear the name
he carves
as if it has always been
mine and I
his. His spelling
casts me off into current. I unfurl
and ferry the rare cargo
over fathoms
and night.
Hickory Dickory
The scent of soil and coffee
rouses a craving
surpassing all other hunger
no matter how true the tongue’s aim
once was. Milk and melon
no longer satisfy.
Fractional Impropriety
I’ll take the cool
night, to see him
lift limbs
in his big man’s jacket
shuffling half scarecrow
half David Byrne
and 2/3 Fred Astaire. He fills
himself and mercifully leaves
some to spare
yet
I secretly call on sky
to ease back, get on
with spring. Heat
this joint up just enough
to dispense with buttoned
cuffs. Inside the place
where his right elbow
folds, a single pink mole
I met once
dwells in shadow. I wait
in the rapidly diminishing
nth of my patience
for shorter sleeves
and longer visits
with fissure
swell
and bend.
Struck, Cored
I cut my fingers
raw on you. Deep trench in the
soft tissue, I wince and fight
the urge to pull back, press instead
into the resonant sinew, press
on. It never toughens
or it has not yet
despite callous
feint and cool. It is still inflamed
in those places. Strings
bite. You don’t
pull back so I won’t.
We make this chord.
It is the first one, the only one
Now, the only one
two three notes to twine this way
ever. This stroke is all
we’ve got. I with you, we lay
ourselves bare against fret
and neck, stay there, suck teeth,
let it sting. Hear the thrum
on vein, the way sound
is wave swelling up
from grain and hollow
belly driving me against you,
plunging us
into us.
What Floor Miss
Conflicting reports from the annual meeting of the International Society of Astrophysicists point to a schism over explanations for several recent anomalies in terrestrial cycles. The majority opinion, presented in an official statement from the Society’s board earlier this week, is that a slight bump in the lunar atmosphere has brought on a stretching of the orbital band, as it may be called. This variation is presented as a simple matter of a correction for the expansion of the universe since the Big Bang, the pace of which is popularly considered invariable but is understood in physical and astronomical sciences to be anything but. Hiccups in other portions of the galaxy are recorded several times a year and there is reason to believe these exceptions are very well the norm. Continue reading “What Floor Miss”
Book Lovers
Each with his favored arm
made his foray
scorning confections and only sometimes opening a hand
dusted with the crushed stamen
of a hothouse orchid. Walt came bearing small sprouts
at least before his straight-up offer of crotch and vine
while against my throat, Edgar licked
glossed feather. I choked down Eliot’s ragged claws and talk
of Michelangelo, glancing against the vorpal snicker
Carroll carried unsheathed. The graze bared
blood beat and Baldwin fire going the way I dared not ache.
I had barely found my feet and certainly not my sense
when, whispering, Kazuo led me to a corner of the room
I’d never seen and there, Salman with a slow grin
esta-esta-estuttered open his voice in song.
4:50 pm, Pink Floyd
Tulips bend to paint a corner of Washington
Circle with candy tongues
tied, twisted police tape slaps at a strutting
breeze, a whir of wheels, skin and spandex sheathing
viscera pulsing femur tibia and tucked wing of
earthbound flight. A checkered cap tops
the pile on a table by an escalator
ringing like a miscalibrated telephone, unheeded
warning every third or fifth body rushing
up to open air, no one turning. Back
after back in suit jacket, wilting and shedding
finally revealing damp shoulder, furred forearm
freed from cuff. Lime-green
chrome and finned convertible
on oversized whitewalls takes the corner,
watering eyes and turning heads.
Delayed train, detour, an extra mile
on foot west, sundog flares against the curved city
bus merging with a hiss. I thought I knew
the way, thought I’d thought of every
contingency but I never imagined him
in the everything
grazing the tips of my fingers, him
in the everything holding me fast
To these teeming streets. Nothing to compare
to this belay. No metaphor, no halo
of light, no vapor trail threading sky
is anything like the music
making me skate an inch
at least above the skin of the planet
and so it should come as no surprise
(except that’s exactly what it does) to find
I learn to fly
the instant I give up
trying.
Studies and Honorable Pursuits
Cedit amor rebus; res age, tutus eris (Ovid)
Shannon E. Williams 