By Cate Marvin
Spokes, spooks: your tinsel hair weaves the wheel
that streams through my dreams of battle. Another
apocalypse, and your weird blondeness cycling in
and out of the march: down in a bunker, we hunker,
can hear the boots from miles off clop. We tend to
our flowers in the meantime. And in the meantime,
a daughter is born. She begins as a mere inch, lost
in the folds of a sheet; it's horror to lose her before
she's yet born. Night nurses embody the darkness.
Only your brain remains, floating in a jar that sits
in a lab far off, some place away, and terribly far.
Your skull no longer exists, its ash has been lifted
to wind from a mountain's top by brothers, friends.
I am no friend. According to them. Accordion, the
child pulls its witching wind between its opposite
handles: the lungs of the thing grieve, and that is
its noise. She writhes the floor in tantrum. When
you climbed the sides of the house spider-wise to
let yourself in, unlocked the front door, let me in
to climb up into your attic the last time I saw you
that infected cat rubbed its face against my hand.
Wanting to keep it. No, you said. We are friends.
I wear my green jacket with the furred hood. You
pushed me against chain-length. Today is the day
that the planet circles the night we began. A child
is born. Night nurses coagulate her glassed-in crib.
Your organs, distant, still float the darkness of jars.
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I spent most of the day when I was not writing, doing chores, or removing cats from vents/each other's dishes/the cable box working on the Silly Tarot Project I put aside last month to work on my King's Speech Tarot. So I do not have a lot to report, other than experiencing the same fury most of us feel about the fact that the Republicans refused to let a woman testify along with their all-male panel of doctors and religious leaders at the House of Representatives hearings on contraception and employers, finally leading several Democratic women to boycott the debate.
In the evening I watched what is probably the finest hour of TV that I have ever seen, Deep Space Nine's "Duet" (which is up for review this week). Then we watched Downton Abbey, which naturally suffered by comparison -- I wish the entire show was about Sybil, Tom, Violet, Carson, Anna, Bates, Elsie, Beryl, and Thomas, and that I never had to see the Matthew-Mary-Richard-Lavinia storyline again, but since Sybil and Tom are the only ones I love unreservedly, I'm content enough now -- though I suspect it was Richard who had Bates's wife bumped off because she knew Mary's secret.
A few more photos from the University of Maryland last weekend -- the Terrapin women's basketball game and the campus, including the sheep that live in the agricultural school barn not far from Daniel's dorm:
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