PHAYVANH LUEKHAMHAN

The luggage is in the car, trunk packed
with boxes and bags like building blocks,
as if leaving was just another game,
this turn toward the open road.
If we were in first grade and this was “house,”
I would be departing for work, you
the library. And after the long recess
apart, we’d meet lips chastely, having the promise
of our whole lives together
to get it right. If this were play,
I’d say to you, kiss the kids for me–I’ll be late,
again. I’d disappear around the bookcase,
hide in my pretend office, distract myself
with colorful picture books, dial a toy phone
to my secretary and look out the window at the rain, the birds.
If I hadn’t forgotten, I’d return to you
whom I hardly know, and you’d be there
on the flowered rug in your socks, reconstructing
the wooden pieces we’d built together, adding rooms.
In practice, we never fought–my words never bore knives
or chased you. I never sat at bars unraveling myself
to strangers, to women who defied lovely. You never sulked
in a nightshirt, overspent. You never smacked
a swath of your child’s skin, made it burn.
If we’d have understood the purpose
of a door, the reasons we return to open it,
the step into devotion, my car would not steer away.
You would not stand so tall, my final backward glance.

a mountain grew out of the shapeless river
we drank the birds like madness
their feathers all manner of chalk
we scribbled those dreams
the shadows of them on our backs
branded ourselves with our made-up
dead languages we had no names for
the months fermented, slid
down our throats bitter, salted
we walked miles of purple
to where our feet could never take us
our words flew like hungry spear, crackled
in the mute slideshow of lightening bugs
we crowned each other holy
wrote wreaths of columbine and clover
rolled into morning the honey
marrow of living with blank paper hearts

in the Meadows, they dipped their bony heads
to the grass and pulled them by roots
into their warm pink mouths

they were black and white and they mooed
an inconsistent chorus and they spilled
from under the red eaves, lazy sun bathers

the herd in their stanchions milked
by hands that had also thrown hay
and smoothed their high splotched hides

they were black and white and they moved
like slow drunks in search of a seat
they huddled in dots along the Meadows

and they steamed in the evening chill
where they would still spot the fields
had the trucks not come to empty the farm

The Commons, February 2007