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A Gynecology
I
There is no Balm in Birmingham
Among the agents used by counterfeiters
to age their stock are: glycerin,
whale oil, rose water. I know this art.
To make their tender legal, to pass current,
my petaled, my limpid aunts
distilled in the coiled copper of their afternoons
animal, vegetable, mineral
into a balmy essence that preserved
their beauty moist.
Leathered as I am,
Aunties, sisters, I smear my page
with crafty balsam, beauteous conceit,
hide to the last, last line the truth that’s not
beauty but bone. bone. bone. bone.
II
Customs of the Esquimaux Women
They do not stalk the caribou
tall-boned over hard white.
Kneeling fur-trousered low to
the bleak of ice they cut one
pure hole, prise up its flat moon.
In under sea the muscled seal
like dark pigs root for air.
One woman loosens furs, dips one
bare breast into the breathing hole:
its nipple spurts a thread of scent.
Seal veer and rise, their snouts
nudge, nuzzle, strike. The woman
screams, they grapple, tug the black
clenched beast on ice, hack off
its head, the woman’s cry still coming hoarse,
rhythmic.
Nights in the igloo she crouches,
softens stiff skin between her teeth.
Beside her in a shallow stone
seal blubber flickers the whole night.
III
Jugglers All
Let the balls be round as oranges, rounder
than eggs, than babies. Let them cluster
the air like grapes before they fall.
Let the Indian Clubs glide and hover
svelte as the legs of sorority sisters
turning cartwheels in the leaf of spring.
Let the glasses brim with order
tinkling in pyramids and not a drop
suggest time shatters even pyramids.
And when the juggler climbs stair upon stair
lofting to miracle glass water chair,
let her then spin around her in great arcs
eggs oranges babies grapes and human parts,
like God by compass rounding out the skies.
Like any woman juggling for her life.
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