Cleave Read online

  II.

  /'MĪGRəNT/

  Of an animal, especially a bird. A wandering species

  whom no seas nor places limit. A seed who survives despite

  the depths of hard winter. The ripple of a herring

  steering her band from icy seas to warmer strands.

  To find the usual watering-places despite

  the gauze of death that shrouds our eyes

  is a breathtaking feat. Do you ever wonder why

  we felt like happy birds brushing our feathers

  on the tips of leaves? How we lifted our toes

  from one sandbank and landed – fingertips first –

  on another? Why we clutched the dumb and tiny creatures

  of flower and blade and sod between our budding fists?

  From an origin of buried seeds emerge

  these many-banded dagger wings.

  We, of the sky, the dirt, and the sea. We,

  the seven-league-booters and the little-by-littlers.

  We, transmigrated souls, will prevail.

  We will carry ourselves into the realms of light.

  THE STOLEN GENERATION

  i. The Severing

  To pull apart, separated by skin and stock

  To set asunder, taken and scattered like dandelion seeds

  To part or open (the lips, eyelids), examine with a fine-tooth comb

  To slice the skull and measure the brain, to prove what is already

  known

  To cleave a family and watch it unravel

  To hinder reunification

  To disjoin a body from its color

  To disperse its history, its memory, its own recognition of self

  To make sense of a loss that severe

  ii. The Snatching

  1869 11th November

  BE IT ENACTED…

  It shall be lawful

  from time to time

  to make orders

  to rescind

  or alter

  that is to say

  For the place of –

  For the care custody and education of –

  From time to time

  Every child living

  shall be deemed to be within,

  under, before justice.

  1886 2nd September

  WHEREAS…

  The duty to care

  The duty to care

  to protect

  iii. The Searching

  To make sense of a loss that severe

  they searched for each other

  for one hundred years.

  One mother would hide

  her daughter in plain sight

  by blanketing her body

  with charcoal. They didn’t take

  full-bloods, only the ones

  with hints of European blush

  in their cheeks.

  One day they went to the river

  and forgot the power of water.

  Charcoal carried off the body

  in a rippling sweep.

  They carried her away, skin still gray-wet.

  Another mother brought her infant son

  to the hospital sick with a stomach bug.

  She left him for treatment

  and six months later implored,

  I am writing to ask if you would let me know

  how B– is and how long before

  I can have him back home.

  I have not forgot

  I got a baby in there.

  iv. The Cleaving

  The word “cleave” means both to cut and to cling.

  The child cleaved to her mother  The child cleaved from her mother

  The difference a word makes in the forest of our longing.

  He cleaved to the bed, body damp with dream sweat, eyes sealed so tightly

  rivulets of tears streamed from the corners. His mind cleaved

  to the fading image of a woman’s (a mother’s?) tender face.

  Body buoyant and brown, she was cloven from the river.

  Mid-stroke, her limbs cleaved like the frayed ends of a rope.

  How do you begin to reconcile a cleaving?

  We try to hold each other  without touching

  Voices scramble  white noise fills our bones

  THE LAST STRAW

  “U.S. woman put adopted Russian son on one-way flight alone back to homeland”

  –NY Post headline, 9 April 2010

  Little boy in a yellow jacket

  stinger pinned  to the  zipper

  on his  chest  a note

  written in a hand

  not his own  Russia-bound

  After giving my best… for the safety of…

  Who  belongs to whom?

  How do we dance without

  the proper shoes?

  He drew a picture…

  The carousel

  of  abandonment

  endlessly

  spinning

  Of our house burning…

  How many

  splinters

  does it take

  to start

  a fire?

  I was lied to … misled by …

  A fuse

  a body

  pleas for

  water

  nothing

  but

  matches

  OPERATION BABYLIFT

  “We bucket-brigade-loaded the children right up the stairs into the airplane.”

  –Col. Bud Traynor, pilot

  April 4, 1975

  Skin still wet with mother’s grief.

  I brought my baby to them,

  I admit it.

  Airlift Takes Off

  Tucked in cardboard and stowed.

  Two to each seat.

  At 23,000 Feet Systems Fail

  In the event of being born

  in a country ravaged by war –

  Explosion

  I heard rumors that mixed babies

  would be burned alive. Retaliation

  for consorting with the enemy.

  Split Cables

  Save – Rescue – Liberate

  Descends

  I asked about the papers. How

  will I find her? How will we reunite

  in America?

  Skids in Rice Paddy

  In the event their skin is soaked in gasoline –

  4:45pm

  Those who didn’t fit

  would make the trip

  in the cargo area.

  Crosses Saigon River

  Under the circumstances,

  the evacuation became necessary –

  Thrashes Trench

  The promise of reunion

  too appealing to pass up.

  Fractures in Four

  Jam-packed flock, throng of new bones.

  Fuel Ignites

  It was no longer a choice.

  Fifty Adults

  The only option.

  & Seventy-Eight Children

  FIRE AND RICE

  “There were large sheaves of papers and batches of babies. Who knew which belonged to which?”

  –Bobby Nofflet, worker with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Saigon

  Though the first flight crashed,

  it didn’t stop them.

  Planes full of moonless hair

  black as peppercorn.

  The mission seemed simple.

  The same planes that shelled cities

  swapped blitz for babies.

  Procedural paperwork waived

  to expedite departure.

  Mothers made promises of meet again –

  Yellow-haired surrogates burying

  the truth of it –

  Meet: In the dike next to the river,

  mouths full of fire and rice.

  What then may I do

  but cleave to what cleaves me.

  –Li-Young Lee, “The Cleaving”

  III.

  ABSTRACT

&nb
sp; Igneous rocks are formed by fire. Conceived in the belly of a volcano, lava drips down its side and deposits at the base. As a result of cooler temperatures, the magma grows viscous on the earth’s surface and undergoes a process of solidification. Basalt, granite, obsidian. Broken down by weathering and erosion, the rock will become sediment, loose bits of matter, the dregs. Later, these same pieces will accumulate and lithify to form sedimentary rocks. Conglomerate, limestone, sandstone. Over time, this same rock will succumb to pressure and sink back down inside the earth to be heated and melted, metamorphosized. Gneiss, marble, quartzite. Once deep enough in the earth’s mantle, the metamorphic rock will liquefy and return to the magma chamber.

  Or will the rock evade erosion, unwilling to be weathered? Will the rock rise up again instead of returning to its magma pillow? Or will the rock crumble into tiny particles of sand and pass its time in a shoal on the bottom of the ocean?

  My body, a stone. Weathered, compacted, compressed. Softened by another body’s tender heat. A hardened face wont to wince. If I jump from a cliff, will the canyon catch me? Or will I tumble, endlessly moving, endlessly seeking a place to rest my head?

  INTERVIEW WITH DR. HARLOW

  What do you taste in the morning when you lick your lips?

  Are they soft or split, cracked by the Wisconsin wind? Do you

  cover your mouth when you cough? With your elbow or your

  hand? When the germs are floating through the air, do you

  imagine where they land? How those minuscule microbes descend

  with invisible parachutes? The power of gravity on weightless

  spit? Do you smirk when they fall in your colleague’s coffee?

  How do you make sense out of loneliness? At night beneath the

  buzz of fluorescent light, do you unlatch the lock? Do you count

  their inhalations as they sleep? Do you taste their morning breath?

  The little bacteria floating in the air and landing on the tip of

  your tongue? If it lands on your tongue, do you swallow it?

  Can you tell me what it tastes like? Do you feel the microbes

  twist as they sink down your esophagus? How does it feel

  to watch them hold each other’s hands, their woolly

  knuckles braided, the touch of their palms? What

  do you do when the lock has been left open?

  What do you do when they reach through

  the cage? What do you do when

  they stare at you straight in

  your eyes and cough

  in your open

  mouth?

  ABSTRACT

  For the first six months, I was a deferred plane ticket.

  Contact comfort is a variable of overwhelming importance

  The infant the pastor refused to baptize.

  The development of affectional responses

  I never sucked my thumb. I pulled out my hair instead.

  Emotionality indices such as vocalization, crouching, rocking, and sucking

  Call me Rhesus, macaque with mongolian spots.

  We can be certain that

  I cry with hunger but know the bottle.

  Frantic clutching of their bodies was very common

  MOTHER OF WOOD

  When did you become a house? Hands budding

  into ivory doorknobs, your mouth sewn

  into the stitching of the couch. One night

  I awoke to your fingers slipping needles

  in my mouth. My tongue a tangled tapestry

  you tried to mend. I never knew you

  were such a good seamstress. You hung my body

  from the shelf like one of those hard-cheeked dolls

  with eyes that blin when you shake them.

  When you watched your own mother sweep

  stifled suffering under the carpet, did you know

  you would raise a home built on the same fears?

  On winter nights the house howls, and I wonder

  if in sleep your mouth is open, ready to wail.

  ABSTRACT

  Because my body is a body,

  I learn to yield. I collect lemons

  from my lemon tree. I bury fish heads

  in the garden. I remember the silence

  of my childhood. The writhing heat rising

  from the grill. The roosters in my backyard

  know nothing about dawn.

  They crow all night long.

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

  Because infants cannot consent

  to baptism or transport, the pastor’s concerns

  seemed reasonable.

  THE CONDITIONS

  That the religious faith of said minor child is unknown

  THE REVIEW

  That the religious faith of the parents of said child is/are informed and verily believe unknown

  THE NAMING

  That the religious faith of petitioners is/are Roman Catholic

  THE CONSENT

  That said minor child has no property or means of support, except that being provided by petitioners

  THE RELEASE

  That on information and belief said minor child has no general or testamentary guardian

  THE ACQUISITION

  THE CHRISTENING

  /MUN/

  Considering how changes influence the earth

  is it impossible to reach a newly formed day?

  Imagine the light of a new translucency,

  new as a natural planet extending beyond its circuitry.

  To be a crescent-shaped ornament

  dangling from midnight’s velvet coat,

  to be a globe-shaped gaslight transmitting

  somebody else’s shine,

  to be white as the porcelain base

  of a fingernail.

  The period of imprisonment in any one night

  silvers into the sleeping one’s hair.

  An aperture at the center of a clock draws

  its hands and says,

  Sometimes lesser splendor reflects fits of frenzy.

  Take this moon-eyed bottle of shine –

  remember who owns the night.

  THE COURIER

  You will settle into your seat

  and slacken your jaw. Before long,

  your ears will pop as you cradle

  your package, holding it

  carefully like a Christmas ornament.

  You will unwrap her like a tamale,

  still warm and steaming.

  The lighting on airplanes is never bright enough,

  and the cold artificial air will arrive in bursts,

  numbing your fingers as they clutch her

  oh so tenderly. You will cover her in cloth.

  Bind her in layers of pastel pajamas

  until all that remains is a bulb-shaped face

  encased in a pale blue blanket. Sunrise

  will leak through the window,

  yellow and low like a lion’s morning growl.

  You will touch her face.

  She will never open her eyes.

  MOTHER OF WIRE

  If I had a choice …

  mother of wire barbed and  wombless my mouth poised to pucker.

  I tried my best given the tools I had, you say. Where were you

  while I crouched in the corner,

  a nest of shadows?

  Bring out the hammer, mother.

  The statue of the virgin Mary illuminates my nightstand.

  I touch-touch-touch  kiss her foot

  soaked in snake’s blood splattered spots of red acrylic.

  In the dictionary of childhood illnesses

  I seek symptoms that fit my unraveling

  hair  falling in clumps  on the couch

  tiny meticulous hands counting each strand.

  Call me Rhesus,

  Young and Moonless,

  monkey without a cloth

  to dust her bo
nes.

  ‘LOST’ FIRST LANGUAGES LEAVE PERMANENT MARK ON THE BRAIN, NEW STUDY REVEALS

  To experience the world muffled

  through the wall of skin

  is like wearing earmuffs

  while deep sea diving.

  Cacophony of whalesong

  and sunken earthquakes,

  tonal pitches seep in.

  •

  How do I translate

  the sound of my mother’s

  moaning? It’s a soft wail

  I hang on the wall

  of my windpipe.

  •

  They say the circulatory system

  is the first to develop

  in an embryo.

  That the body generates cells

  to divide and multiply, to form

  a swelling ball.

  That your blood weaved and whirled

  to become my blood.

  Who was the first you told?

  •

  At week eleven, fingernails begin to appear.

  I bet you didn’t know that nails

  are made of dead blood cells.

  How something could grow inside you

  that’s both alive and dead.

  •

  Once I learned how to talk, I did not

  stop. I drew blood and licked my teeth

  with language, English spilling down my chin.

  Later, I learned how words can wound

  without touching, and I tucked myself

  in a bed of silence.

  PETALS

  My mind is a clenched cocoon

  A fist of grindstone petals

  I was a dancer before I was born

  My dreams spun on the loom, stuck in its pedal

  If I miss a step, snap and pirouette down the staircase

  My feet will wrestle with the vines and the petals

  I wish I knew time’s seamstress

  Eyelashes descend in petals