We’d been feasting on the famous foods of winter: squash, potatoes, a steamed pot of dark greens. And after, we danced in Glenn’s living room above Crystal Creek, barefoot on the Persian rug, eating chocolate cake, and almost knocking over the candles. So when the frogs in the pond out front began to sing—a bass note followed by a high-pitched exclamation—we slid out the door and past the tall clusters of bamboo, over the wooden bridge, moving to the frenzied rhythm of the frogs, who—it seemed— grew louder and more intent the more we rocked to their cacophony. So it was frogs and moonlight and dancing under the bare bones of the trees, the creek suddenly swollen after six years of drought. And Glenn—one year older and nearing (though he didn’t yet know it) the end of his greatest love. And we were calling out to the frogs, who called back to us as we stumbled, nearly into the bracken water, and leapt up onto the pond-side boulders, hands in the air, a light mist falling on our arms, our upturned faces. And I couldn’t decide: was the world enamored with itself?— all this riotous back and forth? Or had we only invoked alarm, amphibian for get-back! get-back! I didn’t know. But how happy we were, for that hour, to believe we were one marvelous body, in our smooth and slippery skin. Even if the frogs did not want us. Even if our joint fates are written, already, in the tainted water, the dark and opulent mud.
"sometimes I want to win. And sometimes I want to lose so badly I can taste it."
Worlds in Worlds, Bonfire Opera : Poems. -- Danusha Laméris.
You’re beautiful, sister, eat more fruit, said the attendant every time my mother pulled into the 76 off Ashby Avenue. We never knew why. She didn’t ask and he didn’t explain. My brother and I would look at each other sideways in the back seat, eyebrows raised— though lord knows we’d lived in Berkeley long enough. He smiled when he said it, then wiped the windows and pumped the gas. I liked the little ritual. Always the same order of events. Same lack of discussion. Could he sense something? Attune to an absence of vitamin C? Or was it just a kind of flirting— a way of tossing her an apple, a peach? It’s true my mother had a hidden ailment of which she seldom spoke, and true she never thought herself a beauty, since in those days you had to choose between smart and beautiful, and beauty was not the obvious choice for a skinny bookish girl, especially in Barbados. No wonder she became devout, forsaking nearly everything but God and science. And later she suffered at the hands of my father, whom she loved, and who’d somehow lost control of his right fist and his conscience. Whose sister was she, then? Sister of the Early Rise, the Five-O’Clock Commute, the Centrifuge? Sister of Burnt Dreams? But didn’t her savior speak in parables? Isn’t that the language of the holy? Why wouldn’t he come to her like this, with a kind face and dark, grease-smeared arms, to lean over the windshield of her silver Ford sedan, and bring tidings of her unclaimed loveliness, as he filled the car with fuel, and told her— as a brother—to go ahead, partake of the garden, and eat of it.
He’d wanted the persimmons and asked her for them, but when she gave him the brown paper bag, brimming over, he was taken aback. Did he really need that many ? Still, he brought them home to his wife, and soon there were persimmons ripening on the kitchen counters, lining the windowsills. Each day, growing more and more succulent until the air was thick and sweet with their scent. At breakfast, he’d break one open with his spoon—the skin supple and ready to give—stir it into his hot cereal. Indescribable, the taste. And a texture he might have described as sea creature meets manna from heaven. When he ate one, he thought of her. And when he saw her, he thought of the persimmons. When her arm brushed, just barely, against his, did he imagine they both felt the same quickening? In myth, fruit is usually the beginning of disaster. And the way they made themselves so obvious— an almost audible orange against the white walls— made him wish he’d never asked her for them, didn’t have to smell them sugaring the air with ruin, as he sat there, face lowered to the bowl, spooning the soft pulp into his mouth.
Thin buzz of hunger, constant hum. At night I drape a net around my bed just to keep them away. They like the flesh above my ankles best, and then the sweetness of my face. The Buddhists say we mustn’t want to kill another living thing. How often have I taken one, crushed it in my palm?
A saint said the lion is in love with the gazelle it hunts. I love salmon, so I sauté their bodies with garlic and butter, slip the moist flesh in my mouth. And haven’t I bitten my beloved until a pink stain colored the skin?
A tiny drop of blood is all they crave. Is that so much to ask? And they are so devoted, groupies at the backstage door, a band of Hare Krishnas, wailing in the street, cherubim, playing their small harps without cease, as they are said to do in heaven.
Only this is not heaven. I dream of a night without blemish, of love without the sting.
But here they are, a mini mariachi, hovering outside the net, singing their same old, high-pitched serenade— volver, volver , they cry, the song about the one that got away.
All morning they’ve been screeching back and forth between the oak tree and the roof, bickering over bits of cat food pinched from the metal bowl by the door. When song was handed out, the lark and nightingale got there first. Who can blame the jays for raiding the robin’s nest—its pale and delicate eggs— for tearing the dark red plums straight from each other’s beaks. Who can blame the ear in its ignorance, for wanting music and failing to hear it?
Don't you wish they would stop, all the thoughts swirling around in your head, bees in a hive, dancers tapping their way across the stage? I should rake the leaves in the carport, buy Christmas lights. Was there really life on Mars? What will I cook for dinner? I walk up the driveway, put out the garbage bins. I should stop using plastic bags, visit my friend whose husband just left her for the Swedish nanny. I wish I hadn't said Patrick's painting looked "ominous." Maybe that's why he hasn't called. Does the car need oil again? There's a hole in the ozone the size of Texas and everything seems to be speeding up. Come, let's stand by the window and look out at the light on the field. Let's watch how the clouds cover the sun and almost nothing stirs in the grass.
The Moons of August, Danusha Laméris
Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds all over the delicate pink string of their bodies, I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley, avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots. I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden, almost vulgar–though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can, forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.
Bonfire Opera - Danusha Laméris