Lizard
The gray-brown lizard so handsomely marked appears on a speckled rock, a movement out from shadow. Flash—freeze. Hot—cold. What the fuck are you doing here he asks the lady in the bathing suit. She sits on another rock nearby but can’t hear him. He one-eyes her. And what you looking at? The absurd woman studies him, his poise and pose, then gazes again at the river cut deep in its gorge among boulders. Sparse brush and oak. Blue span above. The rush and tumble of it. Her wet bathing suit. The lizard squats, thin fingers splayed on a rock. He too stares. Into distances. For a long time. The water’s roar. A suspended light. He cocks his head and licks something from the rock. I love my life he says.
I wait for a rogue wave
I wait for a rogue wave to hit or a seagull to shit in my hair, what it means to sit on a rock near unprecedented sea, the sea that sounds like itself and nothing else in the world at the edge of the world where the waves change themselves against cliff. Here comes another woman down the same path, silent because of the self-sounding sea. Who isn’t obvious, only where and when. She hops the stream that barely troubles the surf. Next I look, she sits naked on the sand with a flame between her legs. This sounds like sex but it’s pages she burns, not self or passion though that’s implied. I can’t bear to watch nor should I. Watch. One who waits for birdshit must not interfere with one who self-emoliates. Instead I pocket two stones, one smooth, one jagged like an arrowhead and climb back up the cliff careful at each pitched step.
And look back where one at a time each page torn out goes up in flame, each page a prayer. I don’t pray, such unbinding the loosening of thought, an unbodiment of desire. How is a mystery and why can’t be spoken. Even what fools the eye. Only fuel, smoke rising in a pillar, my lips flecked with salt.
How To
Don’t waste a feeling. Or a story. Or a way or worry. A minute. A birdsong. Not even one shade of green. Promise the crows anything. Remember the turkey vultures, how all spring they return one by one at dusk to roost in the eucalyptus trees. Also consider the privet that readies new berries so the seasons will continue outside the window. Write a Carte Geographique de la Lune—nothing more sublime can be written in English nor more shadowed with desire, nor more unsayable. That it has not been said enough, even water mouths its lonely syllable. It stutters across the sea and lays cool hands over a lake. Don’t mention it anymore someone will tell you. But how can you compress the horizon or keep it from its risings? It will leer or loom or drift, a silver eyelash, a miniscule crack, an irresistible opening you long to enter. What else is there to know? So much spills out and over. And the ceiling fan spins slow. The spider in its corner spins a secret and the atoms in every part of everything spin, spin the little wheels of our hearts, spin beauty and its waning, the spider’s finely wrought bundle silent, wound with silken thread.
in memory of Pat O’Laughlin
Sally Ashton is editor of the DMQ Review, an online journal. She is author of These Metallic Days, Mainstreet Rag, and Her Name Is Juanita, Kore Press 2009. Poetry and reviews have recently appeared in Sentence, Linebreak, Parthenon West Review, Poet Lore and in the anthology, An Introduction to the Prose Poem. She blogs at www.poetryonastick.blogspot.com