Miro's Notebook by Rick Barot

Harlequin's Carnival by Joan Miro, 1924/1925.

 
Miro’s Notebook

I.

Dusk, thus:
a shirt drops,

the bellybutton rune
showing.

Clouds are soaked,
the sea now

iron, muscle-heavy.
The pond begins

reflecting on astronomy.
The fruit wait.

The furniture
call back their atoms.

The tree asks for
its leaves.

II.

Winter brought into the room
is the whisk of holly.

The purse is a hare limp
on the table, its eye
gone amber.

The birdcage is the work
I am after: bold-barred,
so no bird leaves.

The celadon throat, the iceberg
teeth, the matted grass
of an armpit . . .

A pear, or maybe a stone,
the chilled shoulder shifts under
cover, not persuaded
into similitude.

III.

In the snail-tracked sky,
the mineral grains, a dozen eyes.

You tell me thread
is for seam and hem, not the mica
bead-stitched on the dark.

You refuse to have the shards
the broom gathered
be the moon, seen as aftermath.

But like the thimble, I have no guile.

So let your window
open to the rain coming down,
drumming on the hidden shells.

IV.

Black cherries.
Glass of milk on a tablecloth.
An arm of bread.

The coins.
Green scarab beetle.
The compact’s sleeping mirror.

The fig branch.
The sundial.
The harlequin leaves.

V.

Votive-light evening,
cipher ridden.

The marsh air, and my finger
in places.

Among the lesser constellations,
the fractured

kite, the anemone.
The geese thread-pulled

into the hard sleep.
The clothespin, the gold

in your hair.
The seeds spread

are a flung field.
I sleep on stone, you on moss.

VI.

The red-haired figure
in the station, the man selling
carnations. The scarecrow

landscape, the suitcases
getting heavier with every stop.
Those served as props.

I dreamed we each played a part.

One of us was given to say:
I wanted your distance whispered down
small enough for this room.

And one to say:
I saw you always just a little
out of reach, with white hair.

VII.

A fish-scale moon:
who doesn’t want

to be left used
windsock-hollow?

Now for morning:
the lit wick

of each grass-blade,
the saplings

like legs of deer,
the four walls

verifying the house,
and the slip

of last night’s chive
in your teeth.

 
by Rick Barot


from The Darker Fall, 2002, Sarabande Books, reprinted with permission of the author.

 
Rick Barot was born in the Philippines, raised in San Francisco, and teaches in Washington at the Pacific Lutheran University. His third poetry collection with Sarabonde Books is due out this year. Barot’s poetry has also been published widely in journals including Poetry,  Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and The Threepenny Review. It has appeared in anthologies like Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation, Language for a New Century, and The Best American Poetry 2012. He is also the poetry editor of the New England Review. http://www.nereview.com

Visit him at www.rickbarot.com.