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After the Rape
Author: Janet Buck
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After the Rape
They said: "Whatever you do,
don't take a shower; we need a swab
with the truth on its tip."
But blood had been shed
and she was just rinsing the clot.
Treating herself like yellowed leaves --
shriveling must be removed
in case new growth can use the soil.
A bar of soap and boiling aqua
called her name.
She needed a river with pearls.
They hadn't been raped.
Their bodies hadn't been
victims of scavenger jaws --
a rifling rod that turned
soft innocence to rock.
She set the phone
in dirty cradles of their rules,
scrubbed as if the matrix of horror
were a washable thing,
as if she wouldn't always hear
bleating frogs of grimy hands
beneath a porch of future love.
The water was all she had.
Clean again -- forgetting-wise --
nightmares bleached,
pages of the terror skinned.
She went after the soot
with a sponge -- a dry loofa --
its jagged reefs, its porous grate
no match for the shape
of the forming scar.
From here on out, the moon
would be an ashtray hurled
at ribs of steel.
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Shooting Stars
Author: Janet Buck
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Shooting Stars
Rolling chairs and missing limbs,
freckles on this carnal drape
asking if we're warts or jewels.
Scar to scar and war to war,
we wear each other's tragedies.
Need will slip like bra straps
on an evening dress;
knuckles stretch to find the grace.
Blindness, deafness, crippledom
has more to do with carriages.
A stack of hearts bursting
forth mute gratitude for
ways this fate can carve a soul
while suffering is clenching teeth.
Spirit leaves a footprint too.
Wound to wound like bed sores
rubbing on a sheet. We plow
the pasture of a dream
with bodies weak as plastic forks.
I glance at you; you glance at me.
Wonder why we see the white,
purity inside the onyx of the dark.
Embrace these raw and basic gifts --
motion scissored, rarely fixed
by wallets or a miracle.
Wonder why we push ahead with syllables,
paint strokes bleeding on the plain.
This August night when
art begins to grapple for identity.
Sluggish stars in cloudy skies
breaking molds assigned to them.
No room to sit or stand
or breathe and still we did.
These halls are safer,
even in their brittle risk --
candor's cannon eloquence
comes shooting through a moon-less orb.
Voices making soothing music
all despite this tune-less life.
Sad soup is more digestible
when fingers join to lift the spoon.
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Shrinking Soap
Author: Janet Buck
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Shrinking Soap
"Truth sits upon the lips of dying men."
Matthew Arnold
Sun ball's withered mandarin
tumbles the azure sky.
A rose in fashioned centerpiece
I place just so -- drops its petals on the deck,
curly slivers turning brown,
while I go gray as certainly
as chimneys gather soot and smoke.
Dinner done -- dishes rinsed
in mansions of our tiny lives.
We're so damned good at pleasantries.
I'd lead you to a stack of books
where holes reside, where aphids chew --
if ever our Skoal, our drifting shoal
would settle in a listen cove.
I want that one orgasmic rite
a poet calls a Buddha burst of iron lung,
where air of candor takes
the brittle slacking reins,
rides bareback to the river's edge.
Just once, a meal without the fog,
a lighthouse with its strobe ablaze
steering ships around
tall mountains of our ice.
Denizens in bottles corked
know nothing of the richer reefs.
Pint of urn awaits us all.
Liquor plays a god of sorts,
smiling on our wormy corn.
So much Braille of touch is left
to capture fingerprinted grief.
Just once, a hug that seals embrace,
does not pitch it to the wind.
Hours of these possibles --
currents rubbing shrinking soap.
We love inside mosquito nets
as if the bite will eat our arms.
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