by Linda Rodriguez
I
Inside the
museum this sultry afternoon,
the
air-conditioned hum offers an imitation
peace like
that of libraries and empty churches.
I wait for
you, as I have promised,
promising
myself this afternoon will do no damage
to an
earlier oath, watching out the window
where the
sun shatters
against the
fountain’s water and water
transmutes
to something other than air or water.
Though I sit
at the point of betrayal,
my face
feels smooth and unyielding
as the face
of Saint Teresa
gilded on peeling
wood or the sea
on the wall
before me, becalmed yet broken
by the
ship’s hull and dorsal fins.
The ocean
next to that one is all drowning
storm and
cloud, as if the two paintings were
before and
after, the seeds of one
hidden in
the other.
II
Must it
always be one or the other?
My husband’s
love laps at my closed shore,
then slides
back into turquoise depths, a lake
his love, no
sea like yours,
gray ocean
breakers rolling over
galleons and
frigates and the backs of whales
and sharks
and squid and dolphins who
leap and
squeal as they follow the sails
of men (and
now their motors), catching rides
on the wakes
of ships. He has no dolphins
in him, only
freshwater fish, frogs and trees
under the
water, a sunken forest
drowned with
its squirrels, snakes, ants and bees
that once
made a world, reduced
to a
floating green crest.
III
We whisper
in deep-carved shadows
of the
recreated medieval chapel.
They built
to keep the heat and sun out.
The dark
ages knew
summer draws
insanity and sin,
a poultice
pulling infection from the soul
to burst in
the sun.
It was
always summer in Eden.
IV
Mother of
Perpetual Help,
with your
slanted eyes hurt
by visions
of your later Son
who sits
now, infant, in your hand, a perfect
fit, and
takes your thumb
between his
palms, as if to suck,
pray for us.
Mother of
the Word Incarnate,
though
attended by angels
floating
near your narrow ears,
though
surrounded by hieroglyphics
and striped
everywhere,
your Son as
well, with gold,
though you
wear a halo crown,
despise not
our petitions.
Virgin of
Virgins,
in paint,
wood, song, stone, clay,
I stand
before this incarnation
with its
blue porcelain necklace
and long
hands that cup your Infant
as if you
would never let go.
Help us, we
pray.
V
We enter the
twentieth century
on the floor
above. Neon tubes,
gears and
ratchets, kinetic
sculptures
flashing dissonance,
disjointed
collage, counterfeit
museum guard
so real
you ask for
directions to the men’s room,
have to get
them from the small black
woman in
uniform in the corner.
I turn back,
down the
marble stairs,
run through
the Egyptians
all the way
to the Coptics, hide
among
flat-faced icons, holding my breath
from fear of
your finding me, of what I will want to do
if you do. I
watch you pass the massive stone
lion-casket
on your way out.
I breathe
again
in pain.
VI
In these
halls of art, Mother,
I call on
you with your human face
and divine
Lover who came
only once,
leaving you to someone else’s
kindness. I
can see how hard
your life
must have been with him
always
forgiving.
Yet he loved
the boy.
Of course,
you were innocent,
they say,
and angels smoothed
your way
with Joseph afterward. None of them
will come to
my husband, asleep,
to tell him
I’ve escaped burning
but not the
ocean.
VII
Am I any
less lost in the storm
because it
has a frame?
The
Englishman who laid down
the paint so
long ago felt
the lash of
rain, shivered to thunder’s
blast, saw
lightning burn
its way
across the clouds to the sea,
even if he
stood before a tea table
on floral
carpet as he splashed ocean
across
canvas. His tempest rages before me
six
generations later. Drenched,
I wander
home.
First
published in Heart’s Migration (Tia
Chucha Press, 2009)
Copyright © Linda
Rodriguez. All rights reserved.
For her books of poetry, Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Rodriguez received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence, the Midwest Voices and Visions Award, the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, the 2011 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships.
Rodriguez is 2015 chair of the AWP Indigenous/Aboriginal
American Writer’s Caucus, a founding board member of Latino Writers Collective
and The Writers Place, and a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers
and Storytellers and Kansas City Cherokee Community.
