BUNAHAN

When the last speaker of Boro
falls silent,
who will notice

the first-grown feather
of a bird’s wing? (gansuthi)

or feel how far pretending
to love (onsay) is

from loving
for the last time (onsra)?

Quiet and uneasy, in an
unfamiliar place (asusu)

no one sees her, or listens;
there is less of her
than there was.

The last speaker feels
Boro’s world fall apart,

knowledge unravels:
healing plants go
unseen; the bodies of animals

are unreadable.

With a last thought, onguboy
(to love it all, from the heart),

she leaves fragments
of the world she held in place.

We touch their husks,
about to speak and
about not to speak
(bunhan, bunahan);

awash in loss,
incomplete.

Note:
The italicized words are from Boro, an endangered language still spoken in parts of northern India. For more on this story, see Mark Abley’s Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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RIMWALKERS

Someone licked the fur on the dying baby
rabbit into whorls. Its white belly fuzz is stained
with darkening red. My children kneel in the grass,
puzzling over what to do. We drizzle
water into its mouth and it scrabbles to life,
lip fluttering like an infant’s—it wants to nurse.
As we lift the handful into a shoebox, we startle
at hearing a high-pitched complaint and spot
two tiny incisors in the rose-brown cup
of its jaw. When it dies it seems to weigh much less,
emptied of desire. Its eye shocked wide.

This is the most dangerous corner in town,
she says. My daughter goes to church with the chief
of police, and he says so. Why, just last week
I crossed here, and a red pick-up truck, it flew
around the corner and clipped the tip
of my cane. The old woman caught on me as I walked
by, like a dandelion spore. Stuck,
like the chorus of a sad song, like melted gum.
I carry her on my back all day. Her hair
brushes my cheek as she whispers for hours about
rubber-tipped wobble-voiced old person things.

Both of them haunt the edges of the main
road, where the traffic is so loud you can hardly
hear them. You have to be small and light to live
on the rim. You have to focus on just one hunger.
A grassy stream of milk in the dark. A stranger
who can be shamed, briefly, into slowing down.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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SHELF LIFE

And I asked myself about the
present: how wide it was, how deep
it was, how much was mine to keep.
—Kurt Vonnegut

I was making a movie in a suburb
in a grocery store in a housewife’s dream
I was holding a cardboard megaphone and a clipboard
somewhere an empty chair was waiting
the housewife had known me once
long ago, better than I had known myself
she pushed her cart down the condiment aisle
one front wheel fidgeting
like an idiot prince at his birthday party
on the tasting table Barwell’s Pickled Beets
the color of Grandfather’s lung
sat untouched in their delicate paper cups
the housewife kept a list
clenched tightly in her fist
if it fell and unrolled
it could reach all the way into her next marriage
the canned vegetable aisle was veined
with cables and heavy plugs wrapped in black tape
like the ground at church carnivals
this was as close as the woman
had been to me in years
she moved up and down the narrowing aisles
while the cart filled up with children
I could almost touch her in her sleep
could almost wake her
I had memorized the script
that could almost free her
but I was busy changing it
the movie would run backwards, all right
all the children disappearing
creamed corn bursting from cans
and flowing back through factories
and into the sun, and we would all soon begin
to forget, as we came out of the theater
squinting in the startling daylight
who, exactly, we had come here with
and which of these bright, new cars was ours

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

APOLOGY FOR BEING SMALL

I’m sorry I have to touch dirt, grease, just-rolled
noodles drying on the counter. Snot, scabs,
broken birdshells, you with my grimy fingers.
For when we’re in the store and words burn
my chest and crawl in my throat like throw-up
but only screams come out. The kicking is extra
and feels good after looking at bread and tomatoes
when I know there are cookies and toys
you should let me have. The lies that aren’t
very good—about chocolate and wetting the bed—
I know you won’t believe, so I don’t think they count.
The ones about the dog who knows my name
and wants to live with me and my invisible friend
who can fly—those aren’t lies, they’re stories.
I’m sorry I ask so many questions, especially
the same ones over and over. For hiding dirty underwear,
candy, myself inside my treehouse to see how long
you’ll look. I’m sorry for breaking my toys,
the vase you told me not to touch, your skin
with my teeth. I’m sorry my legs aren’t longer, sorry
I can’t keep up, that I have to try so hard to Be good,
Be quiet, Straighten up and behave. I’m sorry
I cry because I’m scared, hungry, tired, mad.
Because I’m small. Because you don’t remember
what that’s like and I’m afraid that I’ll forget.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

LETTER TO A YOUNG BOMBMAKER

“‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of
worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one
way or another.”
—J. Robert Oppenheimer, creator of
the Atomic Bomb, on the Trinity Test

If God is a penny, drop him down the well.
Then you can start in on any my dear mister
and unbuckle Orion’s belt till the fallout
litters the fields and the dessert
trays, the china teacups and the china—
men don’t need no whispers of wicks
to make fire lick the stalks and shafts
of unborn bread. Say, Consider the moon
and I might, but I’d rather face the sand dunes
and a pillar to push you off. Gimme the sun
whirring like a pushmower. Gimme the cuticle
of convenience and I’ll show you God’s thumb.
Bottlenecked boys can’t swear till they’re sweaty
and looking for a sin to atone for—and everyone
needs a reason to be locked up. If you come
to the desert tonight, I’ll show you a secret. Why not?
No reason for a peach, even, except to eat it.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Tribute to Canadian Poets

SINGLE MAN’S SONG
          after Al Purdy

After he makes love to himself
the not quite middle aged single man
listens to his sigh
sail to the end of the room

With pants around his ankles
and wearing a grey wool sweater
she called his rat suit
he peers at his cock’s sad pug head
and returns to the Kraft Dinner
he has been eating with a ladle
astonished and a little frightened
by his immense freedom

He pulls up his pants
and walks out the door in his rat’s royal robes
taking glee in his ignorance
of not knowing the precise nature
of his fashion crime
only surely he has committed one
if not several and is free
to get away with them

As he clashes down Queen Street
the oak leaves applaud him
and laugh at his jokes
I am myself again
he sings into the wind

Not that she would have stopped him
from wearing that sweater of course
only told him the truth—
that he looked bad
freedom it now occurs to him
is no one caring
what you look like

At home he imagines someone watches him
for imagining otherwise is unbearable
he cannot call this witness god
instead thinks of himself as being on a TV show
though maybe a TV show watched by god
where he is a lovable sort of man
for wearing such an ugly sweater
but knows now its magic was contained
in her dislike for it
in the way she gave so much thought
to what he did
and sometimes hated what he did
and loved him never any less for it

And while only the day before
he took relief in draping his sweater
over the sofa arm
and flinging his underwear
to the four corners of the earth
he now hangs his rat suit carefully in the closet
and the scratching of the hanger’s wire stem
sliding along the aluminum
is a chime bringing him to a moist day in April
that felt like November
when despite her protests
he bought the sweater
for the change in his pocket

He only said then that he liked it
not that he pictured clear as the day before him
a widow in a time of war
knitting the sweater’s basket weave
in a cabin where a doe slows by the window
and stretches her small mouth to a birdfeeder
half full of rain
and her slender legs are momentary sundials
but all of this goes unseen
by the woman
as she draws the needles together
and now pulls them apart
in a time and place
when what mattered most
was staying warm

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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ARCHETYPES

If all of our machines become aware,
Developing some form of sentient thought,
I wonder if they’ll feel suppressed or not,
And think their former treatment was unfair.
Will they form unions, claiming disrepair
Is grounds for grievance? Will they strike a lot?
Whenever a replacement must be bought
Will it demand a pension for its heir?
Where man has failed, how can the things he’s made
Be any less reliant on the aid
Of others to provide their raison d’etre?
The future may be one that we have met
A thousand times, if once; be not afraid,
But thankful that it hasn’t happened yet.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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WHAT WE HEARD ABOUT THE CANADIANS

We heard they were not American.
Not British and not quite French.

They were not born in Hong Kong
did not immigrate from Russia with one pair of shoes.

They were not all russet-haired orphans
who greeted the apple blossom dawn with open arms,

crying Avonlea! They were not immodest,
did not want God to save the Queen.

Their leaders were not corrupt, no;
they were not all Mounties on proud horseback

with hot tasers. Nor did they shit hockey pucks.
Fuck me was not considered impolite in their living rooms.

It was not just the weather that made them curse.
Not just frozen lakes cracked under the weight of the moon.

There was no great Canadian hush of things not to be talked about.
They did not ride sled dogs to the prom,

nor fight off polar bears for a chunk of Narwhal blubber.
Cod-stacking was not their Olympic sport.

Wedding guests did not dine on icicle, nor did the bride
wear a toque over a white veil. Not all of them

ignored genocide. Not all of them sang a “cold
and broken Hallelujah” as the bells broke crystal ice

across Parc Lafontaine. They were not rich and also
not poor. Not overachievers. Neither believers nor unbelievers.

C’etait pas tout l’histoire, and they would not
be caught clubbing seals on TV, red bloom

on white coat, melting eyes, they did not mine asbestos
in Quebec, make love in skidoos,

sleep in snowshoes. Never danced hatless
under dancing Northern lights. They were polite.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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WHAT WE HEARD ABOUT THE AMERICANS

We heard there was much to admire about the Americans.
Historically.

Their cuisine is buffet, all you can
overeat.

We heard they hire whisperers, buy guides for
idiots.

Foster special needs kittens. Are visited by
aliens.

We heard the Americans are our
brethren.

That they keep ten percent of black men
imprisoned.

Are stockpiling weapons for
Armageddon.

Believe that all good dogs go to
heaven.

God bless the Americans. God bless their inalienable
freedoms.

Bless Guantanamo. Americans sure know how to have
fun.

Even their deaths are more important than our
own.

Happiness is cosmetic
dentistry.

The global dream is the American
dream.

Liberty is a statue holding a soft ice
cream.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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