Night Skye Magazine/ Poetry / Ruth Daigon

MOUTHING SECRETS

since I have learned not to kill them
things have been easier

though I prefer my ghosts
to inhabit the dark

if they come by day
I?ll leave all the doors open

I watch them mouthing secrets
smiling as if there were two heavens

I recall simple equations in the heart?s circumference
each sum exquisitely fixed in my memory

women in sweet and sudden rages
for fear the future comes when they?re not looking

children claustrophobic in their skins
fanning out like fish bones

younglings piercing love?s delicate membrane
to taste the fleshy center

friends in the gray solfeggio of autumn
and the ritual smile

in their company the hours pass
until a spill of sun a sweep of shade

and under the ashen stars
my dead are growing old

_______________________________

The Cleansing

In Siberia, during the wedding, the bride was required to wash the feet of the groom and drink the water. Only then was she
considered worthy to be taken as a wife.

She lifts his right foot
then his left
soaping between the toes
scooping dirt from under nails
doing what must be done
scrubbing in unleavened silence.

Pale glue of tears clinging to lashes,
she licks her lips tasting the instant
when she was none other than herself
sitting in the kitchen
curtains drawn
floor swept
dipping into the curve and coil of wife
practicing
until she got it right.

The night before, she dreamt of spring shoots
pushing purple tongues through earth's skin,
of babies swimming toward her
slippery as tadpoles
her unskilled hands can't capture.
And in the morning, she awakes
to pinpricks of sun, birds
blading against the horizon.

This is her wedding day
air thick with accordion notes
swirling skirts, embroidered shirts
the smell of lamb and kumiss.

He sits like a boulder in the sun.
His voice makes him taller.
When he bends a listening face toward her
she unknots a smile

takes one last look over her shoulder
at childhood so remote
it belongs to someone else.
Nothing's left   Not a ribbon   Not a thread
And lifts the basin to her lips.

___________________________________

FUSING SILENCE

In the province no one visits, she's still
waiting to be born. I can
almost feel her breath
brushing by me like a dark wish,

hear the lullabies
burrowed deep in time when I lay
under stars small fires, waiting

under sun's spiral, waiting
under vacant wash of sky
beyond barriers of sight, waiting.

If I empty my head of names
If I empty my pocket of coins
If I empty my shoes
will I feel the imprint of a palm
or hear a voice that fuses silence?

In thought's last extravagance
we reach toward each other
intent and unaware, and I imagine
fears that shape her nights
until the world leaps back to brightness.

Yet, she never quite appears
even in the downdrop of sleep
and the moment is never the moment
where grace begins.

_____________________________________

THE MOON INSIDE

1

Women know how to wait.
They smell the dust,
listen to light bulbs dim
and guard the children
pale with dreaming.

They hear danger
tapping along walls,
sidewalks sinking
and edges of the city

bruising the landscape.
Down long corridors
they whisper to each other
of alarm bells

and balanced crosses,
of shrouded eyes and empty stars
while the moon inside them
takes a slow, silver breath.

2

She keeps pulling him up
from the bottom of the Red River
in stop action or slow motion
and replays the splash
blooming around his hips.

She corrects his dive,
restores the promise
of his form, each movement
clear in the instant of falling.

The moment reversed,
she reels him up
to where he's still
sitting on the bank.
Now, mother covers her scalp
with hair torn by its roots.
Screams sucked back into her mouth
become soft syllables again.

Her shredded clothes re-woven.
The table set for his return.

3

As the body's laid out,
she stands at attention
waiting for the clearest light
and then sharpens her instruments.

First, the eyes removed
to see what was seen,
ears probed to hear what was heard
then the heart dissected
to find what was missing.

It takes time to cut tenderly
into the bone and sinew
of the past,
each knife stroke
a loving incision.

There is no entrance.
Only entering.
When the body's exposed,
she climbs inside,
pulls closed the flaps of skin
and slowly heals herself.

4

In her kitchen, she knows
each blunted blade, worn handle, broken tip,
the past compressed in steel.

Along with sacramental noise of cups knocking,
lips smacking, she hears carving knives and cleavers
splitting days into edible proportions.

Skillful at the cutting board, she pays her
vegetable tithes to the crock pot, the salad,
the wok, slices and slices into the heart of things.

nIneteen-thirty was a long,
cold childhood wedged into a scar
and food that filled half
the cupboard. She'd lick
the pencil stump and make her lists.
Each item considered, written, erased,
re-written according to what jingled
in the broken tea pot.

at six o'clock, she always
listened to the news and groaned,
her body a vast burial ground for
victims of plagues, revolutions,
wars, each groan another corpse.
She stood ironing, every stroke
a preparation for the burial,
a straightening of limbs,
a smoothing of features,
a final act of love.

7

a convention of women facing out
into the lens
picnics   birthdays
all swimming to the surface
of the acid bath
a procession of cardboard moments
poorly focused with here and there
an empty space
like a prediction

___________________________________

ONE BECOMES
Simone de Beauvoir

The compulsive universe hoards another day
being-for-itself, being-in-itself
the sweet swindle of spring
summer?s hazy veil
autumn? s vermilion and ash
and the secret cave she hid in
full of waiting
lodged in the stillness of an earth
lying stunned under some strange heaven.

She will ask her breath
what it is to be human,
how it feels to be.
She will trace it to its roots,
hers the choice, the act,
irrational or wise.

Even in the universe of lost things
or the midnight mind?s wild schemes,
she knows there is only now
and the desert stillness
is the silence of her heart.

Even if nothing is her only something
she is and is
not like a stone, a tree, a tiger
with their fixed essence,
what they do and who they are.
But she, thrown into the vast,
has the power of rejecting all the May-I?s.

It?s a day like any other day
and in appearance the sky is blue.
But she also knows how small the day is
the rush of color
the evaporating brightness.

She hears a hairline crack before the rubble,
listens for thunder in the afternoon
and as she walks the narrow paths of thoughts,
hers the choice,
the move that opens wide.

Standing close and unafraid of meanings,
tart or honeyed,
she takes them in
or not.
Between the known and the unknown,
all names are but one name
and the power to name is finally hers.

Ruth Daigon was founder and editor of POETS ON: for twenty years until it ceased publication.

Her poems have been widely published in E mags, print mags, anthologies and collections.

She was Poet-Of-The-Month on the University of Chile?s Pares Cum Paribus (an E chapbook in English and Spanish).

Her chapbooks appear in WEBDELSOL, THE ALSOP REVIEW, FORPOETRY, POETRYMAGAZINE, THREE
CANDLE REVIEW, KOTAS POETRY ANTHOLOGY both in hard cover and on the WEB.

Some of her earlier poetry collections are ?Between One Future And the Next (Papier-Mâché Press 1995), ?About A
Year? (Small Poetry Press, Select Poetry Series1996).

Daigon?s poetry awards include ?The Ann Stanford Poetry Prize (University of Southern California Anthology, 1997)
and the Greensboro Poetry Award (Greensboro Arts Council, 2000).

Her poetry collections continue with ?The Moon Inside? (Gravity/Newton?s Baby, 1999).

She is part of Pudding House Publications Poetry Chapbook Series ?Ruth Daigon?s Greatest Hits 1970-2000?. ?Payday
At The Triangle? (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series) based on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York
City, 1911 was published in 2001 and one of her many readings was performed in The Lower East Side Tenement
Museum in Manhattan, the area where the fire occurred.

Her latest poetry book is ?Handfuls of Time? (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series, 2002).

Her poetry was published by the State Department in their literary exchange with Thailand and their translation program
has just issued the first book of Modern American Poets in English and Thai in which she appears.

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NIGHT SKYE MAGAZINE is pleased to include Ruth Daigon's poetry online.

[All work is copyrighted by the artist/writer.]