This poem is called "The Magellanic Clouds."
Magellanic Clouds are the kind of cloudy formation
in the sky can only be seen in the southern hemisphere
and probably represent another galaxy.
They're very beautiful in photographs,
I've never seen anything like them.
It was Magellan who named them.
"The Magellanic Clouds," for Eleanor who
liked to see her name in print.
The photographic plate is blurred.
That blurry area is where you laughed and breathed
on the plate.
Lizard skinned prickly pears roll out of your mouth.
A purple bird twists your tongue with his beak and crazy cactus
leaves of love pin you luckily to one man.
You have a mouthful of stars when you laugh,
when you fall over the Milky Way at your feet.
Next door the Magellanic Clouds swirl
and try to force themselves into your painting.
But you are too happy painting little hearts and big hearts
and sticking them all over your husband who
is a river washing silver fish over you in the dark.
Look carefully.
My screen makes a silver line on the graph.
The photographic plate is blurred.
That blurry areas is the Magellanic Clouds
from another galaxy.
Inside me swirl something like the Magellanic Clouds.
All the animals I ride are found in the Magellanic Clouds.
My life is destined to be a cloud, galaxies, light years,
removed.
The dust storm on the desert.
The fog over the river.
A handful of dust with tiny shell fragments.
A gold outline against the sky.
How can I explain it to you and all the succulent women I know.
Wives, mothers, loved, protected,
by men they love, having the shoulder to curl
their heads into at night.
How can I explain to myself this dust cloud that is my life?
I talk in my sleep, just as I talk when I'm awake.
No one listens to me but strangers.
Once a blue vein of electricity came to me in the Magellanic
Clouds and said, there is a price on everyone's life.
Uncurling my ears like new leaves,
I looked at my world, my scarred body, my missing children,
separation from the men who spoke my language.
The prices to walk alone up the stairs, alone every night
with your candle, and alone down the stairs alone every morning
with white footsteps and teacups with tears.
In your day dreams, you must carry the bodies
of your children wrapped in white and strapped
to stiff boards.
People will chase you and accuse you of murder.
The children will sing in your ears
and cut you with the sharp corners of their smile.
Your songs will be bled out of you every day,
as you are cut with different tools, razor blades, knives,
scissors, grass, paper, glass.
One day the words will come out of your elbows
and one day out of your knees.
Scars and holes and craters will cover you.
When people look at you they will run away but words,
the words you've bought will creep out
of holes like beautiful skeins of thread.
Some day I will vanish in the Magellanic Clouds
but will wait waiting rooms to get inside of paintings.
Even the electricity, the fire tells me
I will not have to spend all my time in the sky.
Someday it will be my breath blurring
the photographic plates and the astronomers
will say, see that cloudy spot on the the plate?
We once thought it was the Magellanic Clouds,
but they have moved farther out into space.
It is something new, another enormous cloud
made up of strange gases and foreign particles.
It is something new, and we have no name for it yet,
and I will breathe harder, will blow harder,
will blur more and more of the plate,
will pass through rooms and rooms and rooms of memories
in the shape of apples, birds iron wheels.
The clouds, the clouds, the Magellanic Clouds,
the clouds in my heart, the clouds I ride on,
the clouds under my bed, the clouds of my life,
the clouds always in the next room seeping under the door.
I am a cloud, dust on the desert,
fog over the water, gases in the sky.
Can there be any sadness, once I am named?