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 Kimberly L.
Becker is from the Southern United States, of European
and Cherokee heritage. Her poetry appears in journals such as
2River,
Borderlands, Eclectica, and Thanal Online, as well as in an
anthology
of contemporary women's poetry, Letters to the World (Red Hen
Press).
Some of her poetry is also forthcoming in Farsi translation by
Farideh
Hassanzadeh (Mostafavi). She has held a fellowship from the
state of
New Jersey for her fiction and her poetry has inspired a
professionally choreographed dance. She lives in the Washington,
DC
area.
Gaze Ghazal
A taser? Or the lynx with the stun of that gaze?
So like a sphinx you tried to unriddle that gaze.
You held each other's eyes as long as you could stand
The coded blessing or silent jinx of that gaze.
Only the diminished glance your aged housecat
Confers as it slinks past approximates that gaze.
The lynx in its wildness judges the domestic
And whomever thinks to evade this trial: that gaze.
Of course, it is not the tuft-eared tawny cat who
First blinks, but you, amazed and unnerved by that gaze.
Such frank indifferent appraisal; yes, it's that
Which links you, Poet, to the power of that gaze.
Lief
I pick up a bronzed magnolia leaf
and write a note to you on the back,
on the velvet side.
Then with my thumb I smudge
the message so that anyone finding the leaf,
should they find the leaf,
won't wonder at the leaf's
inscription or be able to decipher it.
I loose the leaf
back to the lawn
where its tawny tones blend with other leaves
that will be blown
then trodden and sodden by rain.
Why do people have to leave?
Now even I can't tell which of the sable leaves
bears your fading name.
They all look exactly the same.
Rubric (for Farideh)
Unfold your own myth--Rumi
A rubric doesn't have to be read
or even red.
In Cherokee, the word for red
contains the word for blood.
Write your own rubric.
Let it pump in your blood through the ventricles of your heart.
It is the indelible part of you
that doesn't change, that can't be readily erased.
Wrap yourself in your own rubric
as in a shawl of warmest wool, sari of finest silk.
Let your rubric be the impress of red wax that hardens to a
sheen
and seals the letter you send yourself in your darkest hour.
Scribble your rubric in the margins of your life.
Take note.
Your rubric remains and is valid in all the languages
parsed in love.
All the changes you will undergo are encoded in it.
All the nights of bitter longing and mornings of fierce hope.
Finally, whatever the last word of your rubric is: cross it out.
Distrust the happy ending unless it comes of seeing clear.
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