Masseuse
After Robin Robertson’s ‘Through the Tweed’
 
She claimed she could make
a man disappear
under her fingers, that she’d worn
 
the fingerprints off both her thumbs,
rubbing troubles out of the back of clients
till they lapsed.
 
Head to toe, she covered a volunteer
in a veil so we couldn’t see,
then set to work. Through the silk
 
she nudged around a fauna
of muscle and sinew,
feeling for the spots where he kept things
 
private. She counted down
the years of tension
like rings on a tree trunk,
 
and though the body seemed to keep its shape
I don’t know what reveal
we were expecting,
 
when she lifted up the veil
like breeze through the curtain:
a swerve of starlings,
 
his parents risen from the dead,
or just the print where he had lain
still warm on the mattress.

Yeswa mwen te bwè twòp Prestige. Lè mwen te leve, mwen ap genyen yon gwo mal tèt papa. Mwen te benyen vit-vit poutan mwen pa t’ap gen tan pou mwen manje: mwen te anreta nan travay mwen. Jasmen, chofè taksi moto mwen an, te rive tankou li abitye a uit è. Li te enève men li te tann mwen.

Nan moman mwen te antre nan biwo a, mwen te sonje mwen pa te fini yon rapò pou bòs mwen an ou istwa sa a pou Soulouque. Mwen t’ap eseye mande Ming pou ede mwen men li t’ap fè yon istwa sou pwason. Sibitman, bòs mwen an te rive. Li te move paske mwen te dezòganize: mwen te evite li pou jounen an toutantye. I feared her physicality. 

For Eurydice
 
When you slipped back, that day,
from grasping light, that clings        or tries
 
Did you roll from the body
                          (a constant falling away)    
 
Or did the eye
statue you;
Your hell an unending corpus.
 
                            And they, still
                           Spin syllables out of silence,
                                                     the very abyss of the ‘ah’
 
Though blue on blue
orchid on orchid
You cannot give
             without the double that removes.
 
And our eyes, we hold, immortal
to catch the bloom
 
The slipping wisp of woman;
 
(while she
lies
below             
in negated stone).