Fog, like a China wall,
an enameled dragon, silver
slithers and crawls
toward the western horizon
swallows the mandarin sun
whole like a host
down its grey-gauze throat
burying alive all light,
all hope in its stranglehold
on the evening air.
I have seen nothing
more beautiful than this moment:
the death rattle of day;
the spasm of twilight.
by Paul Totah
August 28, 2004
(staring at a painting by Luce di Tommè 1365)
A woman swoons in lapus lazuli,
upheld by a man in chartreuse,
a woman in tangerine.
The man’s arm supports the woman’s bent breast
covered in silk the color of cherry soda,
candy apples, field-ripe strawberries,
the same color
as the trickle down the two arms,
the gush below the right nipple
between the rib blades,
the splatter at the feet
staining the wood, running
into a fire-red pool
into a pencil-thin stream, leading out the picture,
out the frame, down the wall,
onto my shoes and through, past dark socks,
through my soles, up capillaries
mixing with my blood, mixing me up
with someone I’m not,
someone I’ll never be,
someone dangling from a cross
while another person below
dressed in red,
holds his arms out
as if to say: Fall.
I’ll catch you.
Who Died Before the Rescue Team Reached the Japan Air 747 That Crashed on a High Mountain
Take care of your mother.
There is no hope.
It’s been a happy life.
Thank you all.
The world is pain —
the sound like knives in the side —
the word “endure” helps me
suffer the world,
suffer myself while I
walk barefoot on tidepools
of blood coral,
sea urchins, wet, dead
kelp and closed mussels (the silent
shell lips)
— the shallows of loss —
before I sink into depths of deep blue
waters, the blue of God’s
eye, unblinking, open,
shining, wet.
The pain suffers me to endure
redeems me somehow
leaves me dry, wet,
waiting, received.
I have receipts to show for it,
wounds on my feet, blisters
of a hard journey, a
slap on my cheek
when I was 13.
It saved me. It may
save me yet.