Habitation

—after Margaret Atwood’s “Habitation”

We lie on the soft couch, our legs twining like freckled eels,
enmeshing in pearly needled grins of pelagic happiness.
We sip our wine and listen to the radio whinny, spurs jingling
in the pueblo twilight, light spilling from canteen windows.

Two planes collided in mid-air yesterday, and the passengers,
all parachuters, leapt for safety and survived without injury.
We take turns cooking and cleaning up for each other, put-
ting the conch shell to our ear, hearing the blood thrumming.

Every day the sun hangs a little more crooked, its smile a little
wider, its gold teeth and yellowed gums a smoker’s knick-knacks.
This summer is the hottest on record. The newsstands catch
fire. We turn over in bed. We are used to our orbits shifting…

We talk about our days, pretending our trite quicknesses are
interesting, from the school, the office, reciting Gilgamesh’s
Epic with insolent cherry lips, kohl arrows staining our cheeks.
I feel your indolent heat against the dark mahogany of my ribs.

Your lips spark in prayer. Your long shadow unclasps my bra.
This marriage is not something pillared, no marble temple.
This devotion is a kindled red fire out on the frozen tundra,
and night is falling. Flint strikes on flint. Stone births daylight,

a magic in an age when every rock and tall tree bears a soul.
We bless the sacred heat that licks at the crooked kindling,
a gift from the gods that warms our limbs weary from hunting
reindeer. We huddle closely in our fur cloaks and skin boots.

Not far off, the first pigments are being laid down at Lascaux,
Altamira, such lifelike renderings that seem to snort and shriek…
Meanwhile, the portraits at Chauvet and Nawarla Gabarnmang
are ancient, ancient already, and buzzing with honey ghosts…

What is the secret to threading an arrow through the ribs of
a running deer, as it gallops through the underbrush toward
the dregs of its life? It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you—press your
face to the white of this page and I’ll whisper it in your ear.


---Published by Hawaii Pacific Review, March 2024
---Posted 10/01/2024