Ras - The Last Skin

Table of Contents

ALSO BY BARBARA RAS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
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80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in Penguin Books 2010

Copyright Barbara Ras, 2010 All rights reserved

Page vii constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Ras, Barbara.
The last skin / Barbara Ras.
p. cm.(Penguin poets)

eISBN : 978-1-101-22289-8

I. Title.

PS3568.A637L37 2010

811.54dc22 2009053320

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Many thanks to the editors of the following magazines and publications, where the following poems first appeared, some in different versions and occasionally with other titles:

Deep gratitude to the Artist Foundation of San Antonio, whose generous grant helped during the writing of this book.

Enduring thanks to: Alfred Rucker, Anna Zo Rucker, Ellen Dor Watson, Emily Wheeler, Nan Cuba, Wendy Barker, Jenny Browne, Marianne Boruch, Jan Jarboe Russell, Andrew Porter, Jerry Winakur, Lee Robinson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Gerald Stern, Rebecca Solnit, George Nitchie, Michael Fischer, and Abe Louise Young.

Additional appreciation to Marian Haddad, Ignacio Magaloni, Assef Al-Jundi, Karen Kelley, Roberto Bonazzi, and Jim LaVilla-Havelin, for help along the path.

Special thanks to Betsy Rogers for a quiet haven in which to write.

With great admiration, huge thanks to Ellen Phelan for facilitating the use of her work Applause for the cover art.

To Paul Slovak and the rest of the team at Penguin, thank you for your invaluable support, terrific help with this book, and for your commitment to poetry.

There were feathers and the light that passed through feathers.
There were birds that made the feathers and the sun that made the light.
The feathers of the birds made the air soft, softer
than the quiet in a cocoon waiting for wings,
stiller than the stare of a hooded falcon.
But no falcons in this green made by the passage of parents.
No, not parents, parrots flying through slow sleep
casting green rays to light the long dream.
If skin, dew would have drenched it, but dust
hung in space like the stoppage of
time itself, which, after dancing with parrots,
had said, Thank you. Ill rest now.
Its not too late to say the parrot light was thick
enough to part with a hand, and the feathers softening
the path, fallen after so much touching of cheeks,
were red, hibiscus red split by veins of flight
now at the end of flying.
Despite the halt of time, the feathers trusted red
and believed indolence would fill the long dream,
until the book shut and time began again to hurt.

Frailty everywhere, in the loops
of blood traveling 12,000 miles of veins a day,
and in the fluttering of prayer flags hung out
on a cold day that promised sun, but delivered
snow, all its flaky symmetry lost on impact.
Trembling in the cities, wavering between masks
and crutches, between Rabelais and Robespierre.
Harshness of light, bend of dark, the boots
of justice, trembling. Should I speak of bones
in a plot of purchased dirt, buried in dark
mahogany, itself in danger?
No matter what, at the wake
theyll say, She looks good, doesnt she,
death and disguise at a standoff so tense,
petals tremble.
And you, the last time you trembled
was it like bird, beast, or fish? Or like
trees, the most agile of tremblers?
The water, the sand, the embers tremble.
When the sun angles at the right slant,
it finds us in our little cave, a few friends,
a late huddle, failure dancing around
our fragile fire, the fire we feed
with our nail bitings, our paper money,
our guilt, our worthless guilt, breath and more
breath, while beside ourselves, our shadows flicker,
in despair, in laughter, the same trembling.

All year, death, after death, after death.
Then today look how majestically clouds float in the sky,
God putting on a show of tenderness, nothing like thoughts
that rise and drift in my mind, like flakes shaken
in a snow globe, and my brain laboring in its own night,
never feeling the punky starlight of dark thirty, the time
a friend said for us to meet and had to explain it was half an hour
after the first dark, when daylilies fold up and headlights
lead the way home, but maybe too early
to find the moon turning half its body away,
holding it hidden like the black side of a mirror, unseen
until it breaks, unexpectedly, the way grief
breaks over you when youve already given all youve got
and hands you tools you dont know how to use.

The blush of dark thirty turned bleak
when I heard about the O
O dark thirty, military time for 12:30 a.m.,
hour of the deepest dark, when, if Im awake,
as I often am, a storm of thoughts battle one another, now settling
unsettlingly on the ways we make war and flaunt it.
Take the Civil War double cannon on the lawn