Choosing Heaven Or Earth

It was college
and there was
no money
so I lived
on sweet potatoes
and one simple rule: If
I could survive without it,
I did

and shopped at Butler's Pantry,
an untidy place
of dusty light-bulbs
and grey cracked linoleum.
I'd pick up items from shelves
and ask myself

If I don't purchase this today
will I die?

If yes, it went into
the crook of my arm
against my chest
bagged and carried
up stairs to my apartment.
If no, it went back
to its place on the shelf.

That day at Butler's
something smelled
of summer's light
and of summer's air.

A pyramid
tall as my eye
yellow, and red-blushed,
an occasional stem
with a leaf
curling
over firm flesh.
Eyes on
the cleft between
mounded breast of peach,

I picked one up --
not the largest
or the brightest
but the closest --
and inhaled
the wonder at its skin.

Would I die without this?

After I replaced
heaven, and purchased
my pound
of potatoes
I took them home
and washed
peeled
cut
and boiled them.

As I ate
over a physics textbook --
which cost a hundred times
my breakfast, lunch, and dinner --
immersed in the Second
Law of Thermodynamics,
there came
the scent
of peach.



May Kuroiwa

Someone Forgot to Put the Moon Away

A Jarhead, they called my son,
and remade him in their own image.
He was perfect when he left
but returned home with his jar, broken.

I leave my unconscious husband
and check my boy, his breathing
coming in broken whimpers.
Where does he run to at night,
legs thrashing the sheets
to cloth butter?

I call to him from the hallway
until he flings a fist at the air
(once he left a bruise on my chin
and once, kicked a hole in the wall),
rolls over, and is silent.

I sit in the kitchen
where we nicked birthday heights
into the door frame,
at the table
where we colored eggs,
unable to plan tomorrow’s dinner,
or decide if I want coffee, or tea,
or should go back to bed.

Who left the moon out?
Was it him?
His father?
Was it me?

I see the moon.
The moon sees me.
God bless the moon,
though He’s forgotten me.




May Kuroiwa 7/9/10

Isn’t This Also Art

The artist tied her thick, black, luxurious, tangled, majestic hair to the luxurious, black, thick hair of her lover her collaborator and they sat back to back, butt to butt, shoulder blade to shoulder blade, tightly tied together by their tangled hair and called it art and sat there and sat there and sat there and sat there this is art, they announced and we came and we watched and we watched, and we asked is this art? and by our presence as we watched and as we watched, we answered, yes this is art for they were naked, for they were exposed I do not remember whether they were clothed but they were naked they were exposed and we watched them in their nakedness exposing themselves to our eyes our eyes boring into their still, stoic, tense, passive, vibrant bodies their nakedness becoming a part of our unwanted nakedness our bodies now becoming a part of their performance their nakedness, their art changing our bodies their nakedness becoming our nakedness as we watched as they sat sitting for hours without movement like two Hindu gurus who had not eaten for two centuries we could see them breathe we could feel ourselves breathe sometimes an eyelid blinked while we shifted our weight and shuffled our feet their two bodies were as one two Siamese twins reconnected joined at their hair their bodies, their beings flowing into each other two bodies becoming as one— we saw this together you and I, together even though you were dead your ashes scattered we experienced this together we—the living and the dead— we are still joined— Isn’t this also art? Peter Goodwin