Tamara Myers

Poetry
by
Tamara Myers

Old Fruit

They broke you open
old fruit
leaving a rich purple seam
running from the notch in your collarbone
to your wrinkled white belly
where
shaved of your hair
you were smooth.

I broke open
when five days later
I saw you for the first time
hands folded over your chest
and too much rouge
too much knowing
under your suit and tie
there was a seam
like a zipper
hidden
but I had seen
closing you up like an empty sack.

You broke me open
with your hollowed brown pit
moving light in their hands.
I am afraid now
because each night
I dream time back
and you are there.
But I know
the seam is fragile
and one day I will break open
old fruit
like you. 
 
 

Weaving Cranes

I walked with my father
in the Japanese Gardens
between the bon odori woman
the dying man
and a girl
with black eyes and slender legs
who stepped in the fountain
like a crane.

We saw the girl near sunset
in the green marble pool
between a spread of fat neon-yellow dahlias
and the pruned old framework of geodesic dome.
My father, never a devout man,
started humming under his breath,
making an old radio hit
about a Tennessee flat-top box
into a sort of gospel,
drawing out the long low notes
until they rippled across the edge of the water.
I just stared.

We watched, silent, as
her delicate, soft-webbed toes
dipped in the water carefully,
never touching
the soft white intaglio earth
carved beneath the surface.

She spread her arms,
grew flight
and was gone.

That night, in the car driving home,
the way people without wings go home,
I watched my father;
he watched me, 
and we made a bargain
without words. 
 
 

Meditation

In the seldom rain of Arizona
the desert has made peace with God.
It understands

in a way we often can't
water is a gift
a flowing prayer returned as quickly

in the few thick moments after dawn
as it first fell.  And behind--
nothing.

In a day
the red blooms of saguaros stain sand crimson
paint rocks with faith.

In the desert, the only redemption
is heat and rain
and heat. 
 
 

Good Friday

There were fifty of them at least
fifty-two, my mother later said
crowded together in a bit of dusty light
that poured through one small window.

Their living bodies packed in, one against another,
reflooring the straw with an undulating gray carpet
of feathers and beaks, wings and tails
so many, I couldn't tell them apart,

their noise something I hadn't expected
a rumbling rasp, sucking in air almost greedily
overcrowding even the sharp, cool gusts of March
that could never reach the back, dark corners of the stall.

My father had strung a line between two oaks
outside in the yard where the sunlight made it hard to see
reflecting off the packed brown earth
it glared over him as he worked.

I attached short twine loops along the line
my father following behind me, pulling each
testing the strength of them while my mother
fumbled in the shadow of the barn

catching chickens.  Together we hung them
by their feet, their mud-encrusted wings beating the air
and the whole line started to swing, slow at first
then rocking under the force of their pounding.

I hadn't known what to expect when my father
opened the knife, palming the blade against callused
square-ended fingers--something quick, perhaps
or maybe no fuss at all.

But the chickens kept beating, rocking the line
still moving, even then still racking their wings
sending their blood in quick red spatters almost like paint
sealing the dirt with the divination of their deaths. 
 
 

Sleigh Ride in Bessemer, Michigan

Tilt your head back.

All you see are stars
thrown out across the sky
covered in a fine mist net
burning through the snow
until it hurts to look down.

That is what the wind is like.

It tightens across muscles
in your cheeks, your breasts
you crouch down over it
shutting it out, shutting it
but still you--

tilt your head back

and the dark and the cold
are tangible things
bearable only
because the sleigh moves
quiet through the mountain night. 
 
 

Searching for the Dead

In autumn rains
under full sunlight
with birds silent and singing
I search for you.

I thread highways
and gravel roads
pick my way through fields
nearing you
with the compass
I bear always in my mind
to map out
the space you made in me.

But I have lost my north
and spin freely
between earth and sky
tumbled.

 

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