“In yellow night, the day refuses to give ground/and I prepare to wait out its siege. Soon you’ll/arrive, and together we’ll chant the Midnight/Sutra”
1
I went skydiving
because I wanted to know
what it felt like for a woman bereft
as I am to plunge from a high cliff
from Heaven to earth below.
Above the sinuous estuary
floats a continent of clouds
snow peaks up close
cutting a jagged ache into the air
a wound that can’t be sewn.
Crushed stars, cinders
falling sprinkle the water, giving it a sheen
that will only last until
the tempest from the west
sweeps in and steals all light.
Am I wise, intuitive, attuned
to earth’s rhythms, or just high strung?
I want to give my life to somebody
let them live it for me
but I find I have no takers.
The annihilation of the self
was supposed to feel like Pacific surf.
Instead, it’s a tiger shark
caught in a propeller
the murky cloud of blood trailing.
2
We made our pact on a bed of clover
in the worst dust storm of the year.
Grit in your teeth, you promised devotion
and I shouted back I would cherish you forever.
We spent the week shaking sand from our clothes.
You’re just a man, no one of special importance
except that I can’t cease thinking about you.
I slice thin the eel, see-through, like that negligée
you bought me, the one I only put on when alone
imagining that it will summon you.
In the soybean field, someone is whistling
whether for his dog or making up a wedding tune.
Rolling down my window, I listen hard
wanting to hear that faint melody, make it mine.
Just then, a labrador barks, bounds to its master.
Always the flash of cards in your hands, the magic
trick where you make me guess what I already know.
A scorpion runs across my shoe, harmless, only lost
in this vast irrigated desert, where dry river beds
fill with sudden floods, gorgeous with toxins.
Wind blows fresh with dung scent, while placid horses
pretend not to know where the excrement came from.
I’m watching them, taking notes, as my therapist
instructed. Actually, she said to meet more people.
Probably she wanted me to join a bridge club.
3
I keep trying to reconstruct my genealogy
one made of flattened soda cans
empty of carcinogens, and deflated balloons
masquerading as cheap condoms, exiled
from a birthday party of taste and decorum.
Crows circle my yard, doing a good imitation
of hawks, but with the slight menace of
strike-breakers in a coal camp, trying
to get by. I curse them and their ancestors
all the while shelling dry corn and flinging it.
All of my neighbors have turned to Bodhisattvas
and I don’t know how they did it. The neighborhood
watch has labeled me carnal. I know my gauze curtains
and twelve candles lighting the window make things worse.
On the other hand, maybe the house will burn down.
I slid my hand under the covers, looking for your cock
and found an aphorism. I don’t mind so much that it’s short.
The fewer words pass between us, the better.
The curves of my body used to be the conversation
until little by little, we spoke of everything.
A vase holding peonies refracts sunlight
streaming through open blinds and draws the eye
away from the flowers. I will have to rearrange those peonies
adding nasturtiums and bluebells. Either that
or smash the vase and watch the shards fly.
4
My midnight nature has left me restless
and I roam the streets into the small hours
in a kimono I won at a raffle. This is the night
of the huntress. But the warriors went
hunting elk. Now I won’t even get to be prey.
I set all my furniture on the lawn, deciding
to trade feng-shui for the void. No one came
to inquire, not even vagrants. I sit in a folding chair
primping with red lipstick and a glossy chignon
as if nothing whatsoever had gone wrong.
You bought me a bunch of gladiolas
forgetting my allergies. I held them
to my bosom, bruising petals, eyes burning
which you mistook for tears of joy
and I was happy all had gone wrong.
Then came a night of passion like those
when first we met, when my hemline
ensured that you never heard a word
I said, and I didn’t care, because
I wasn’t listening to you either.
Your prowess was great among stinking sheets
ones we didn’t change for three days
enjoying their sour smell. Later, as I pulled them
clean from the washer, a whiff of bleach
almost brought me back to my senses.
5
In yellow night, the day refuses to give ground
and I prepare to wait out its siege. Soon you’ll
arrive, and together we’ll chant the Midnight
Sutra, no longer content to speak our own
language. Thus, our fleeting desire turns eternal.
I’ve been to that chasm where the rockslides happen
and scrambled up its slopes, while stones rained down.
The skinned knees and cut arms couldn’t
keep me away from the waterfall
I heard but couldn’t yet see.
I could exist only in the rustle of sheets
and all that leads up to it, comb, wine
gut, snare, without complaint
as your figure comes and goes
flickering more than my guttered candles.
But I must pull out the stubborn crabgrass
work as a temp among people for whom
poetry always comes on a card, trim fat
from the cheap cuts, wait for the cable man
with his vulgar leer and three-day beard.
Yet somehow, I fold all this dreck back
into our wavering world, knowing
that I’m the one who has to make us whole
and solid, seamless as my best silk dress
spun and sewn from a single thread.
Johnny Payne is the arts editor at Merion West. Johnny is a poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist. He has worked extensively in Latin American Studies, especially literature under dictatorship and Quechua oral tradition. He directs the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles. He earned his doctorate from Stanford University. “Midnight Sutra” is the title poem of his new poetry collection, his fourth, just out from Cyberwit Press.
