Free Incarnadine by Mary Szybist Page A

fasten myself
    to the touch of the flower.
    So what if the milky rims of my wings
    no longer stupefied
    the sky? If I could
    bind myself to this moment, to the slow
    snare of its scent,
    what would it matter if I became
    just the flutter of page
    in a text someone turns
    to examine me
    in the wrong color?

Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle
    Are you sure this blue is the same as the
    blue over there? This wall’s like the
    bottom of a pool, its
    color I mean. I need a
    darker two-piece this summer, the kind with
    elastic at the waist so it actually
    fits. I can’t
    find her hands. Where does this gold
    go? It’s like the angel’s giving
    her a little piece of honeycomb to eat.
    I don’t see why God doesn’t
    just come down and
    kiss her himself. This is the red of that
    lipstick we saw at the
    mall. This piece of her
    neck could fit into the light part
    of the sky. I think this is a
    piece of water. What kind of
    queen? You mean
    right here? And are we supposed to believe
    she can suddenly
    talk angel? Who thought this stuff
    up? I wish I had a
    velvet bikini. That flower’s the color of the
    veins in my grandmother’s hands. I
    wish we could
    walk into that garden and pick an
    X-ray to float on.
    Yeah. I do too. I’d say a
    zillion yeses to anyone for that.

Invitation
    If I can believe in air, I can believe
    in the angels of air.
    Angels, come breathe with me.
    Angel of abortion, angel of alchemy,
    angels of barrenness and bliss,
    exhale closer. Let me feel
    your breath on my teeth—
    I call to you, angels of embryos,
    earthquakes, you of forgetfulness—
    Angels of infection, cover my mouth
    and nose with your mouth.
    Failed inventions, tilt my head back.
    Angels of prostitution and rain,
    you of sheerness and sorrow,
    you who take nothing,
    breathe into me.
    You who have cleansed your lips
    with fire, I do not need to know
    your faces, I do not need you
    to have faces.
    Angels of water insects, let me sleep
    to the sound of your breathing.
    You without lungs, make my chest rise—
    Without you my air tastes
    like nothing. For you
    I hold my breath.

Entrances and Exits
    In the late afternoon, my friend’s daughter walks into my office looking for snacks. She opens the bottom file drawer to take out a bag of rice cakes and a blue carton of rice milk that comes with its own straw. I have been looking at a book of paintings by Duccio. Olivia eats. Bits of puffed rice fall to the carpet.
    A few hours ago, the 76-year-old woman, missing for two weeks in the wilderness, was found alive at the bottom of a canyon. The men who found her credit ravens. They noticed ravens circling—
    Duccio’s Annunciation sits open on my desk. The slender angel (dark, green-tipped wings folded behind him) reaches his right hand towards the girl; a vase of lilies sits behind them. But the white dots above the vase don’t look like lilies. They look like the bits of puffed rice scattered under my desk. They look like the white fleck at the top of the painting that means both spirit and bird.
    Olivia, who is six, picks up the wooden kaleidoscope from my desk and, holding it to her eye, turns it to watch the patterns honeycomb, the colors tumble and change—
    Today is the 6 th of September. In six days, Russia will hold a day of conception: couples will be given time off from work to procreate, and those who give birth on Russia’s national day will receive money, cars, refrigerators, and other prizes.
    A six-hour drive from where I sit, deep in the Wallowa Mountains, the woman spent at least six days drifting in and out of consciousness, listening to the swellings of wind, the howls of coyotes, the shaggy-throated ravens—
    I turn on the radio. Because he died this morning, Pavarotti’s immoderate, unnatural Cs ring out. He said that, singing these notes, he was seized by an animal sensation so intense he would almost lose consciousness.
    Duccio’s subject is God’s entrance into time: time meaning history, meaning a