Weekly Wisdom from Mr. Trollope

"Power and will are the gifts a woman most loves in a man."

                                        --The Bertrams

How the Body Approaches What it Yearns, or A Pearl

When the end was near, I remember I saw a house,
Yes, a house, as I ticked off the deaths this year.  
The house boomed above me woven in task,                         
A watercolored war I drew, artist.  
I want to know what the body knows,
How plants are trained to work for man
And the sweet, firm pressure of grasping
Where property ends.
Rising above touch mixed as batter,  
The ribbon and the rolodex, the names of the men.
What happens here spins the keys that fray
From my spine: untie me with the soft etching
Of a vapor in my torso.
Feel, I have no idea what is impossible and
I want to know what the body knows.
In an instant, yeast proves my abdomen,
Perfume washes my ribcage, and I bury you there
With your smoke and your sweat, the lungs of your face,
Until my fingertips have made a golden map of your throat.
Ring, earring, necklace, I lace around your cuffs and collars, oh
I drew this, artist, I am the lady of this house, my body
Knows I want to unfold my limbs like a telescope
To the space between your breast and your gut
And taste your waistcoat
And your beating heart,
And eat at the paint of that sketch
You made of my house.  

For Guenevere, after Aracelis

My heart is tangerine leaves and calligraphy,
whole cloves and a pistachio nut,
incunabula and skeins of lace.
I wanted to write a poem for a woman, and a wife
I used to be
that would make you long to rub the fabric of my petticoats
between two fingers,
break a harp’s string strung with little yellow birds,
fold paper with bone and make a crease.  
In my muslin rucksack I carry:
wrist ribbon, skirts, leather boots, cinnamon.
Tools for binding books.
I carry names with immoderate love
like a house that stands the test of time.  My house
has marriage trees out front, spiny forest trees out front
where violets grow.  
My heart is May Day, an illustration with a dainty hand
My poem has one eye open and its fingertips in a song
My house was an ocean and now it is a mountain range