LIBERA ME

 
I.

 
Pain resur­faced, exit­ing out of my arms.
In the dream was the face of your father but not my father.
In that way I knew he had tak­en you with him. Music, a tor­tu­ous path.

There­fore grief is ascribed to the body.
A force fluc­tu­at­ing over time.

We believe that when aban­doned, every mechan­i­cal element
of the body is sub­ject to a voice per­haps, or an ani­mal sound.
 
 
 

II.

 
But I want­ed to write about the music inside the music.

The sound inside the cor­tex: a quaint and open-mouthed syl­la­ble, slop­ing down.

Your skin in this weath­er, the loud sound.

*

Once the arm is attached, the non-log­ic of con­nec­tive tissue
would allow cells to pass in and out of the mate­r­i­al, as in nor­mal bones.
 

In the first instance when the fin­gers pressed down.
 

The Haydn Sonata, for exam­ple. Or the pho­to­graph where you lie in the grass look­ing at the woman who is not in the photograph.
 
 
 

III.
 
 

Con­nec­tive tis­sue can stay in the con­tract­ed state for hours.
 

Arms may be locked in any posi­tion; move­ment occurs
with the mind soft­en­ing, touch that warrants.
 

In this way you could attach to me what­ev­er it was I longed for.
 

Your death: a cig­a­rette burn on the left side of the sternum.
An evening etched on skin. Cock-hard.
 
 
 

IV.
 
 
 
A falling off from a world one can­not give birth to.
Room of undi­lut­ed light. The Ada­gio of the Haydn
Sonata; sound inside of anoth­er sound, stripped down.
There is a woman out­side of the pho­to­graph, an
under­ly­ing osti­na­to of desire. There­fore connective
tis­sue forms rope-like struc­tures which sheath the bone.
Pros­the­sis attached to a plu­ral­i­ty of filaments.
Then the skin, that organ of fire.
 
 
 

V.
 
 

You told me the sto­ry of your father’s death before
it was writ­ten, blood flow­ing out of the shithole.
 

Time which is the ruin of all things.
 

Your wrist across my breast bone like a whis­per or a threat.
 
 
 

VI.
 
 

Pack and get dressed dar­ling, your skin
in this weath­er will shine. Our love is ruled
by cold stars. Can one walk with tenderness?
Andante con tenerez­za: white on white.
The heart is a syringe, the sky gun­ning us down.
I enter and you fade further.
The air is clean as snow. 

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J. Mae Bari­zo is the author of The Mar­ble Palace. She is the edi­tor of The Aviary (www.theaviaryonline.com). New poems appear or are forth­com­ing in Boston Review, Prairie Schooner, Den­ver Quar­ter­ly and DMQ review.