Amie Whittemore
In the Valley of the Heart,
Manresa Beach and Middletown, CA, 2018; for Katie
along a cursive shore, amid its watery script, below the forest crowning
its banks, beside cliff walls with their muddled punctuation,
bright and dull, pointed and brindled, smeared, knotted, softened, green and rust
and blue and brown, cased in fog’s humid breath,
beside the Pacific’s nattering waves,
in sand that seizes everything
before transforming it into arias and sorrow,
reckless anticipation—
where dogs approach us like epiphanies,
where pelicans coast, always
returning to us, our bodies rippled
in the flame of our encounter—
my love it is early. Now, gone from ocean,
—its moon tug, its insistence—dawn stretches above me,
a cat over the mountains, its back in the dust, the burnt trees clawing
its velvety body, and you
are not here, as you usually aren’t. You are awake
though, returned to your mountains, beneath your cat’s kneading paws, beside the man
you love like a spouse, a galloping sentence.
Our love is a fragment. A tendril. A hook in the jaw
of a whale, of a cave, of a fox’s wing—
I believe in so little
Sleep. Pragmatism. Saving thirty percent
of your salary. Forgiveness. Water. That
you can’t have sweetness without thorns. O blackberry,
O liminal footstep, O softly, midwife of lambs, midwife
of braided trees, of steeped green tea,
of the blood-filled cup and spherical foods,
of gold swimming in every egg,
whose eyes build staircases inside me—
Love, is it early anymore?
The heat from your coffee lays its palms
on your face and your man jokes in Morrissey’s voice
while he’s kneading dough
and together you are a song dashed
with cardamom. I like the way
he cares for you, the way I can’t,
and I imagine him talking to my man
and what they would say about us
as we slip from them like mermaids
into the ruffles of underwater peonies,
into hammocks of kelp,
into the violet husks of siren song,
and the green, the blue forgotten,
the verbs pulsing beyond our fragmentation
like phytoplankton, like habitats, like nacre and clove and winsome and loose—
Faraway, sunlight twists through your long hair.
Your eyes become you.
I do not believe in the next life,
but I am naming its shores, I am planting its seeds,
I am marking my molecules
with your saliva, with your pearled vision, hands
thin with longing, I am
counting on nothing to get us there.
Dove Questionnaire
Questions and one answer taken from the American Dove Association website.
What’s the difference between a dove and a pigeon?
The difference between cloud and fog,
rain and ocean, the difference
between love and loving her.
Can I make pets out of wild doves?
If you value balanced checkbooks.
How long do doves live?
In a psychic’s glance, in curtain lace.
How do I sex doves?
Whistle for a good perch
and release winter’s leather,
forgetting the hazards
of song and weather.
Curtsy like a peony
sloughing its tethers.
Do doves mate for life?
Do forests groom each other?
What causes a seemingly healthy dove to suddenly die?
Sometimes night doesn’t forgive us.
What is a mule dove?
Stubbornly in love, yet it never seals the deal.
Why are my doves so wild?
Why is your tongue so tame?
Do doves sing?
Do fireflies graph dusk?
Why are some dove species so active?
Bleeding hearts are always on the move.
The Bear
rose from the pavement,
oil-black, its eyes
weak coffee, its teeth
crowded and yellow,
bear of wisdom,
bear of strength
without need.
The bear rose
on its hind legs,
dripping tar
from its fur,
emerging into itself.
The bear came to me.
I did not ask.
I did not want.
Glamsy bear,
bear of dark unrest,
cloud-spun,
bear coiled
in its own gravity.
Bourbon-eyed bear,
in its soot-stained coat,
bear of loss and reckoning.
I turned to face it.
I offered a hunger
that required no mouth.
for Carly
The Horse Matchmaker
Their angsty hooves massage the paddock.
If land could bruise. If land could unclench.
I watch each ear twitch, flourish of tail.
Geography makes fools of us all.
I stand beside a mare’s haunches, one hand
on her giant hip and the perfume
of her longing drenches me—like us,
it is not only physical.
Fullness seeks us all.
If folly. If frolic. I dream like a witness.
A lonely stallion is hard to bear.
His grievances obtuse as triangles.
Sometimes I faint and the owners worry,
bring cold compresses—
is this where their money sinks?
When I’m able to choreograph
a courtship it is like sewing a ball gown.
Even then, sometimes—a flaw in the fabric.
If falling. If forthright.
A mare turns her tea-colored eyes on me
and it’s true I often look away—disappointing
a horse is the worst feeling I know.
I watch two, as they court,
nostrils sucking in their flavors—rich hay,
rich sweat. If true. If dark.
One mane torches the sky.
The other’s tail gleams like a ship’s wake.