Green Linden Press

Mala 60 / Cornerstone
 

1 The roof first: couldn’t I just stay there,
2 on the verge, on the edge, hands over my face,
3 with the licks of flame just beginning,
4 what licks, what flame, who cares where
5 all this came from, & what’s underneath: I forget
6 who built it, & how, using what for mortar,
7 & what happens next, once it starts burning:
8 that’s the language people speak where I live:

9 I forget, I don’t know what you’re talking about,
10 who ever heard of such a thing,
11 as the fire turns the roof into air
12 & starts to work its way down:
13 there’s no way to know how it really happened,
14 you needn’t always assume the worst,
15 as the fire like a scythe takes the living
16 tops of the nearmost grasses away,

17 & down, now clearing the upstairs bedrooms,
18 the night air pouring through as if it’s helping
19 & if you were on the roof, now you’ve fallen
20 to the rooms with bells & cushions & trays,
21 with wallpaper covered in invisible fingerprints
22 the fire makes visible just before
23 pouring through like a mighty stream or something:
24 What did you think it was made of anyway:

25 If the house is a country, yes, let’s say that,
26 a country house, with columns, as if
27 whoever lived here before had no
28 place to breathe between there & Athens & Rome,
29 whose burned roof transferred to a hill in Virginia,
30 a virgin house, on virgin land,
31 they’re clean words, aren’t they, city, country,
32 virgin, Athens, land, plantation:
33 a virgin house where generations
34 of what-should-I-call-it reproduce
35 magically, it’s a magic house
36 at the summit of all human endeavor,
37 arranged in meticulous hierarchies,
38 to be studied, to be reproduced exactly
39 & over & over, for hundreds of years:
40 a plantation house with a fire pouring through

41 the bedrooms: the latifundio’s privacy,
42 far from where that fire’s headed,
43 what cellar, what cell, what cornerstone—
44 & how else could it have, & why must you,
45 & for now we’re in the long hallway, off of which
46 the serving trays, beside the feather beds
47 & whatever else might occur to them
48 & lines of chamber pots & pallets & shoes:

49 of which the fire makes quick work, not
50 like the house work, so long you could think
51 maybe unending, until tonight,
52 every fiber of every sheet
53 making its contribution to the project
54 of recomposition, the white house made air,
55 air even, once the smoke clears,
56 the ghosts starting to gather might breathe:
57 & down, & because the fire comes at night,
58 the people upstairs are gone,
59 the sleepers, if you want to remember their faces
60 think of someone turning away from what she can't
61 stop seeing, who stops seeing,
62 & someone else walking that way
63 you walk when you leave a sickness so long
64 it becomes just the way you live—

65 until the fire comes, after your whole life
66 passes waiting for that day, that night,
67 on the first floor the salons to prevent it
68 & the footsteps of those trying to speed its day,
69 the kitchen where they dreamed about it,
70 the old ways erased the way the fire
71 is erasing the house, the way it is
72 made nature, until the fire comes:
73 in the smoke you could hang on to for a minute,
74 to the way it is almost the way it was,
75 hanging suspended, like what else, I don’t want to
76 carry these ashes in my pockets anymore,
77 in my eyelashes, under my fingernails,
78 this house made of ashes always but not
79 so plain like this, as the fire
80 turns the hill house into night sky:

81 the first floor, the front door
82 where who stood & who bowed & who entered,
83 the acropolis of the Américas, what
84 gibberish is that, I can’t hear what you’re saying,
85 were you invited or did you arrange the flowers
86 the day someone near you passed & they were dancing
87 & you poured from the pitchers of oblivion
88 & they danced like that fire’s dancing tonight:
89 purposeful, intent, improvising & patterned,
90 the front door all the way back to the kitchen,
91 & time enough to travel out, beyond the hill,
92 but tonight the work is down:
93 through the carpets & the floorboards & what did you think
94 you’d find there, no matter where you lived,
95 awake or asleep, the fire finds it,
96 past hiding : the cornerstone :

97 It looks familiar, doesn’t it, if you catch
98 a glimpse before the flames get to work,
99 visible with the house almost gone
100 & the place it settled stirring underneath,
101 as the fire moves through its ancient assignment,
102 familiar even though you’ve never seen it
103 because you’ve seen it every day
104 & at night behind your closed eyes:

105 this place this fire was traveling toward
106 all this time, so one night you couldn’t not see
107 where all this came from & what’s underneath
108 where I come from, where I live.

(This poem is from the anthology Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry, forthcoming from Green Linden Press.)

Suzanne Gardinier is the author of twelve books, most recently Atlas, Amérika: The Post-Election Malas, and Notes from Havana. "Mala 60 / Cornerstone" is an excerpt from The Spookmalas: Plan B(e), forthcoming 2023. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

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