The Attraction of the Green, Green World

proved irresistible, amused her as she watched her body compress, head sinking into shoulders, ribs into belly, pelvis into thighs, knees into shoes, shoes into mud, a soggy suction that offered no choice other than stepping out of the shoes and leaving the heels of the shoes, the laces and vamps of the shoes, the tongues and throats and insoles under which she had tucked fascicles of her work to rot in time with time itself. Gravity’s work by then was already complete on the lines of her poems, having compacted them into small chests for questions with only conjectural answers, little lockers for letters never sent, pocket-sized cases for fortune-cookie fortunes, raffle tickets, dried posies, what-nots.

Espousal, An Epiphany in Seven Parts

1.
The moon was full, a custard pie on the horizon. On the pier, men in undershirts gutting mackerel. We looked east, the surf going in and out, ten minutes to tomorrow, almost leap year, our hearts dizzy, unsure where to go next.

2.
At noon on New Year’s Day, a ride in a Bimini-topped motorboat down the river, into the cut, into the ocean. We were on the ocean! Another night, then another night, one without a shut-off valve, his unlikely proposal, my yes.

3.
People were invited, my parents flown in, papers signed, dated, January 6, 1972. Croquetas de jamón, ensalada rusa, a huge sheet cake iced in white, our names swirled in blue. Tacitas de café, pitchers of Tom Collins and Cuba libre.

4.
A woman the hosts brought back with them from Honduras attended to the children, picked up plates, cups, stepped outside to smoke a cigar and howl with each exhale, then returned to refill the ice buckets, empty the ash trays. 

5.
The host was a spy, a handsome man from the West who had a new wife and a new son and paintings by his first wife on the walls. He pulled out a pen with cyanide pellets from his pocket to amuse us—From my time in the D.R. 

6.
The new wife took a samurai sword from the mantel, gave it to my new husband who raised it over his head then took my hand as he lowered the blade to cut slowly into the cake, seven times in one direction, seven times in the other.

7.
Oh tropical cake in a coat of white, pieces cut with martial precision, oh softest mass yielding to a curious weapon that signals conquest, like grounds at the bottom of a coffee cup, or meringue so sweet that it numbs the tongue.