CANNIBAL DREAMS

At first we were just roommates. He answered the ad I placed in the paper, and I chose him, as I might have chosen a dress for church: unremarkable, conservative, neat. He seemed to be all those things. He worked as an accountant, didn't smoke or drink excessively, and, unlike the other male applicants, didn't come on to me when I showed him my room.


One night, as we ate boxed spaghetti together and watched Casablanca, he said to me, “Have you ever eaten frog?”


I’d dissected a frog in tenth grade biology class, but I’d never eaten it. I regarded him suspiciously and after an abrupt silence, told him, “No.”


"Would you like to?" he wanted to know.


Another pause, after which I responded, "I’m not sure." It seemed a rather forward thing to ask, a strange and ambivalent question. Or maybe he was joking.


He was dead serious.


"There's a guy at the market who sells frog's legs," he went on, "and I bought some from him this morning. Would you like to try some? I'd love to share them with you."


Frog legs. Visions of bad Chinese buffets came to mind, as did the frogs in the window well screaming as they were attacked, torn at the neck, belly and eyes by a rabid shrew.


"I’m game,” I said. “I'll try some."


At the time I barely knew him well enough to remove his whites from the dryer; so it was strange to consider sharing delicacies with him. But there was something so sincere in his face and his voice, so innocent and inviting in his, "I'd love to share them with you."


When it came time to actually eat though, I was worried for a moment that I wouldn't be able to after all, that I would insult him, and worse, that I would reveal to him a weakness, a fear. But as I watched him savor every mouthful, chewing slowly with mute rapture, I couldn't resist, and took a tiny bite. It tasted like tender chicken thighs, cooked to perfection and basted in herbed butter sauce.


I mmmmd my approval without thinking, and he smiled at me, saying nothing and everything at once.


After that night exotic dining became a weekend routine for us: sweetbreads, rabbit pie Cornish hen, ostrich burgers, buffalo steak, squid, sea urchin, shark, raw oysters, Rocky Mountain Oysters, steamed mussels, escargot. Then of course there was the vegetable and fruit kingdom: artichoke, kohlrabi, blood oranges, plantain, guava, pomegranates, kumquat. We devoured it all, and I grew happier and more fearless with every new discovery.


I also learned a lot about him from his culinary crusades: "Tonight is sushi night," he would say, "because it reminds me of my stint as a DJ in Yokohama," or, "Try this jambalaya. I got the recipe from my landlady in Louisiana. She taught me voodoo hexes, too." Once, in the forest, as we picked wild mushrooms to eat with our freshly picked asparagus, he pointed to a patch of dainty flesh-colored fungi with round caps. "Those are magic mushrooms," he explained, "I tried them once."


Here was a guy who ironed his tee shirts and wore a tie to work, and he had partied at Mardi Gras and eaten magic mushrooms. I was intensely jealous of him then, and, of course, suddenly in love.


He watched "B" movies on late-night television one night, and showed me how to taste wine the next. He had a tattoo of a dragon on his shoulder and a Fishes of the Great Lakes poster on his bedroom wall, framed. More than that, however, he was entirely at ease with all his private contradictions, and those of the world at large.


Soon I began to obsess about him leaving. Not that he had said anything about moving out or moving away; but I knew it was inevitable that he desert me, just because there were still places he hadn't been. And one of those places, I reminded myself, was my bed. I would not let him go without, as he would say, sharing it with him. So I waited for an opportune weekend, bought an extra bottle of Shiraz for our supper, dabbed on some exotic perfume. Patchouli.


"Clara," he said to me after it was over, "I should tell you I'm already attached."


There was a picture of a pretty woman in a military uniform in his room. I had hoped it was his sister or his cousin, but had never asked, just in case I didn’t want to know the truth.


"That's fine," I lied.


That night, after he returned to his room, I dreamed I was having dinner alone. The meat was choice, delectable, tender and rich, with the flavor of wild game. I knew in the dream that I had cooked it, that I had even hunted the beast myself in the forest, but I could not remember what it was. Venison? Rabbit? Pheasant? Bear? I couldn't say. But I knew the sauce was made from magic mushrooms. Patchouli simmered in the damp heat, and I wondered if eating this flesh was a sacrilege. I thought that even if it was, it was the finest meal I'd ever had. Only when I woke did I realize I'd been feasting on him.


I've recently learned that some species of frogs are cannibals, and I haven't been able to touch them since.

c. Melissa K. Dalman-Furbush, 2004

August Shower

I watch you, a view
whose angles trip pictures up
beneath the footing of our daily passage.
Above, parted, are our stars.

One, singular, falls --
a smoking jewel wondering
and sluffing off the expanse of night.

The willows shudder, and we make our wishes

beneath the stars which haven’t fallen.
I look for anything worthwhile.
I search constellations
hoping to find out how and why it is
I’m here with you.
 
c. Melissa K. Furbush, 2009

Testimony

Your body is bound in time, cords of colorand streaks of light.  Pressure points
and painful lines converge
and this is your testimony. No witness
to bear their thoughts
as you gently come undone.


This is the first day of spring,
and you its first humble wren of sorrow.
You dare look into the sun.



A tiny earthquake rattles a new earth.
You shake too, knowing it will not be forever
and there will certainly be rain.


c. Melissa K. Furbush, 2009

Slipping Away

I slipped away to Texas and was invincible,
I had no middle name, nobody knew
I was already twenty-eight
or that I preferred martinis at the Ten Club
because of the chocolate strawberry
hanging on the lip of the glass.

I was living here and there,
touching bases called Easter
Christmas and my father's retirement party.
Holiday gifts from Mexico,
but gray space in between.

Living there and here it's easy
to get caught in the middle.

Slipping away was having
no last name or favorite color,
going from Tuesday to Saturday in one breath
and never recalling small things

like the smell of home and the old tavern
in Spring Lake where you can still get a drink
for two bucks any day.

(In Reynosa the margaritas are only fifty cents.)
At three a.m. drunk on good tequila
when I stumbled to my door no one knew back home
that I had driven blindly on a foggy night,
seeing patches of road but missing my exit.

It takes twice as long to get somewhere
when you can't see what's in front of you.

This is slipping away.



c. Melissa K. Dalman, 2001

Crux, 1992

I am not comforted by knowing
that he bleeds from his hands and his side
while I rest two thousand years away.
It doesn't make tears stop coming
to think of him with arms
stretched wide as darkness
falls over everything.

I cannot be reached by promises
nor by crucifixion. I can't be bought
by words I've memorized and never understood.

My knees bent I
cannot take this drink. Too much
wine already runs my veins
and holy blood is not shed
to mix with mine.

I want to listen
to whispers that have fallen
silent. I know now
how the shallow breath of prayer is deep
and grace is not a word I hear in church
and write off with a grin and wait
for gods to fall over me when I
cannot pray or hope or hate.

The words I want to feel are alive
but not in me.

A golden cross
strung from the ceiling
reflects the lights from the sanctuary.
I approach the altar pray
I will be strong enough to fall
on my knees again like all the others
and believe.

When the wine
touches my lips I am changed
if only for a moment; I am part god,
part anger and I can taste only wine
not blood.
                         Let this cup pass from me.

c. Melissa K. Dalman, 1992

Ash Wednesday

I am wearing your shirt
and it smells like cinnamon, sweet
vanilla, Chianti. I watch the clock, humming the minutes
till you come home.

The moon is fighting
with winter’s wilting hands, threatening spring.
I am warm and nearly blind, staring into the fire, one ear

always listening for the welcome whir
of the garage door opening, your footsteps
shuffling across the cement, the turn
of the doorknob and the occasional
accidental setting off of the burglar alarm
cutting through the easy night with cries
sharper than the screams of an angry woman.

Tonight, I’ve offset the alarm and you come in
smelling like bread and beer, cigarette smoke
and draw me to you, weak with hunger and with thirst.

c. Melissa K. Furbush, 2008

Behind the House

I planted marigolds
to soften and color the perimeter
of our shed. As they fade
to peach and die I lay my heart down
written in stone and weathered
by the unrelenting seasons.

My love lay like webs
curled and half buried
with empty husks where baby spiders
emerge, primitive and hungry
and the words can not be read anymore but it doesn’t matter
as the branding never fades.

It never fades. I kiss the sweat off your shoulders
as they shudder and I taste the salt
of dusty boat launches, of hours alone
with books and pens and paper,
of televisions blaring the same movies and dreams.

You sing the low down you done
cheated me blues and chased a million

stinging bees into the mists
fast as an electric hummingbird sucking
liquid meth out of a feeder covered in
DARE stickers hanging off a tree
out behind the house.

Your fists rock

and you drum
the beats of the margins and lines
and in your rhythmic
staccato blasts out behind the shed
you sing to the only angel you'll ever know.

c. Melissa K. Furbush, 2008

University Park, Chicago

In a field of statues, you
and I are laughing at the pigeons, breaking open
a warm, ripe pomegranate which you tell me
is the fruit of good intentions. We eat to fill
but the seeds are small, and we are starving.
It’s spring and everything is flowering.


We talk about this, and about the end of courses,
a wedding, a distant dream of Europe.
All this hope, our very best


smiles fighting off this darkness coming up in me.
I can barely see its face, don’t know its name, yet
I welcome it as a friend, become enraptured
in the idea of blackness, as in love.
I am in love


and nothing here makes sense. We drink another glass of wine
and toast the skyline, disbelieving.

c. Melissa K. Dalman, 1994

Turnings

for my father


In gardens he still

works the ground until it gives
and turns beneath the steady weight
of the till.

My father, stronger than the devil, never
knew to whisper soft to daughters
who needed him.


But to the fields
of dill and strawberries and sometimes
rows and rows of giant
flowers I never could name, he
spoke gently, making everything turn
softly toward the sound of him.


On summer nights he let me
ride the tractor wheel
and I watched earth turn
while he sat silently behind,
the statue of my childhood,
whispering soft to the rising stalks of corn
while guiding the course of the tractor
and my life.


A quiet northern breeze always came
gently from somewhere beyond
dark red blueberry fields,

blowing his breath into my hair.

c. Melissa K. Dalman, 1993

Confessional

Fresh cut flowers on my bureau

scatter your breath around my room.
Each day I am astounded again
by my silence.


I have not spoken for weeks


though I have whispered angry prayers
and I have borrowed sighs from the wind.


Joy is a word rusty from neglect. I am
the Holy Mary of Remorse, lighting candles
to your absence and sending out a prayer
before snuffing out your memory
and damning you for your sins.


I stand in paraffin, my feet steadfast,
my blood coursing, dancing
beneath my pale skin.

c. Melissa K. Furbush, 2007

Composting

Mid-summer I ripped up all the brown-eyed susans,

imagining your brown thumb's reproach
as I fed them to the tiny heap.
Self-seeded poppies join the growing
mound by bushels in September,
along with rhubarb, corn stalks,
over-ripe tomatoes. I dump out


exhausted soil from indoor pots,
impatiens dreary from the summer sun
and yards and yards of grapevine
topped off by cabbage heads
reduced to stench and slime from early frost.


When winter came so did the flu.
I was sick with it most of the season,
dreaming deliriously of being barrowed out
to toss with the pungent brussel sprouts.
but finally spring came, and my fever broke.


So here I am at the pile, and I
with you, am gloriously overcome.


The trash we sorted has nurtured every root
and my strawberries are coming up like ants.


c. Melissa K. Furbush, 2007

Nine Months

Nine months has come and gone.
Nothing is what it was and
too much is the same.


I look out the kitchen window
at the yard, full of boxes and yesterdays
and zinnias and sunflowers too
not knowing at the time how important
the sprouting of seeds could be.

The backyard is spotty, patchy
where the dogs had come in after the geese.
The house has become empty walls.

You’ve unearthed the trueness of yourself
and I am having your child.


Inside, the walls hold me
weeping every time you let me down
and they no longer sustain me.
There are cobwebs, dirty tiles.


You step into the morning
and speak with eyes
your misgiven love for what those walls gave
when we needed it the most.

Who do you love, baby? Who do you love?


c. Melissa K. Dalman, 2005

Silences

Summer


My mother gave me diamonds
when I was nine. I took them
with clumsy hands, emptied them
from the blue satin satchel, then
took them outside to see
what colors they made when
the sunlight settled over them.


Wanting to see a pathway of stars, I
tossed them into the drive
and delighted in the way the streams of
light danced across the yard, and all the rocks --
even the gravel -- changed from gray and brown
to silver and blue and gold.

I called to the window for her to come and see
the heaven of stones outside, to come and feel
the way a sack of stars scattered
made the whole day seem part of a dream
when you wake and find your pillow damp
with tears, smiling.


But the look on her face
when she set eyes on my rapture
of rainbows rising over the drive --
when she saw the gift thrown away, just
tossed outside like yesterday’s trash -- told me

I had wounded her by failing
to see what she meant.

      The silence between us now
      is like the silence between us then.
      My delight is her dismay, again.
      Opening my throat is like opening a bottle of sand
      and pouring it over the words
      I almost said.
                               I couldn't speak.
                               Not then, not now.


Autumn

Autumn always brought geese, v-shaped flocks
flying south. She would take me outside, point

to the sky, show me
the wonder there: she saw it


for a second that flickered like a falling leaf, caught it
like one catches a glimpse of a diamond
before it is swallowed in the sand.


And then she sad that the wind was cold
and that it was no wonder the birds went south.

My mother hated fall.
The browns, the golds, the rusts
could only mean one thing: death.
Summer was dying
and soon the windows would be covered with frost.

I bathed in the leaves
that had drifted into beds of color.
I could taste life
in the smell of them, could live there
forever.


          The silence was cool. She was inside.
          I was here.


Winter


The world was white with wonder, and I
was no better for it. I watched from within
while the wind howled at the windows, while Jack Frost
etched diamond secrets on the panes.


Once the last black cloud had drifted eastward, she dressed me
in my warmest, wrapped me tight like a tiny Jesus so tight
I couldn’t touch my boots. Then she took me
to the outside magic land of wonder, all new.


Her eyes sparkled like icicles, warming in the sun,
and she seemed so much a part of the masterpiece
until she ran inside
to escape Old Man Winter’s cold hands.


                                            But I let them catch me.


          Sometimes I lie in the snow
          and talk to Orion.  The geese are south;
          I am older.  She is inside.
                           There is no silence like this.


Spring

The April lake is still as cold
as frostbite, but the air is changing.
I can see her changing.

Her face is brighter, the color of new roses

blossoming on her cheeks.


I am sure that spring is here.


There are no patches of white on the ground, no ice
hanging from the roof.  Easter lilies
are growing by the clothesline.

Resurrection is blooming like geraniums
and I feel it breathing in my hair.


She has given me her diamond necklace.
I take it with slender white hands, tie
the silver clasp tightly around my neck.
 
She says I seem so much a lady.
 
I feel the cool of diamonds burning on my neck and wonder
at how they are so cautiously strung
                                                         never to be scattered.


They glisten like a circle of stars
about my neck, though I’m not so sure diamonds
were fashioned for daughters like me.


c. Melissa K. Dalman, 1993

Gone Fishing

You’ve never been one to fish,

but you wait patiently as I do.


We’ve been on the boat for hours
without one catch. Not a single snapshot
to tape to the refrigerator, Caught that walleye
at the Willows, I might say.


Not one catch.  


I work at the bait shop

to pay for my fancy for trendy clothes
and for your addiction. I look good in blue.
And you’ve got that new tattoo on your right arm.


You buy my worms and hooks.
and the fish take it all for free
but avoid the hook.

The water turns from clear to cloudy
as the sky darkens and the horizon is bright with endings.


I make my way to the back of the boat, to the tackle box
and the cooler. I wish I could say why it is that I come
and bring you here with me.


The water reflects in the murky bank.
The sun threatens to disappear.

Behind the walls of the willows
is a backdrop of cottony clouds.
I can see the fish in the river
peering at me through the moving tide.

c. Melissa K. Furbush, 2007