The Rose Seller

I

Cycles of despair 

follow the rose seller,

his warm hands, unfolding the flower

from tight bud to the blush of its cascading geometry.

He holds 70 or so heavy roses, the long woody stems

Open into a practiced cone, 

a perfect dome,

the swell of a cell wall,

a surrogate belly,

the front of a lingam,

an egg.

The dome in the town center strikes a bell every hour,

pigeons disperse.

Today I discovered that we live in a post-holocene world.

We cannot detect 

the next cycle of life on Earth.

His roses are wrapped in the daily paper, which tells the story:

No one wants the immigrants 

who arrived on the shore.

First the Polish, then the Chinese. 

Filipinos in the north

work in the homes of the Milano elite.

Now the children in the town are from Bangladesh.

It’s spring for the rose seller—

My shame has kept me from life.

I’m ashamed

of the rows of clean white eggs in the store cases.

I’m ashamed of proud thornless roses in the market,

the refuse of clothing factories, 

the piles of garbage in Rio.

When you travel from Bangladesh

your mother might see you off at the train station.

There may be a boat – you may walk some distance on foot.

A checked plastic market bag

may hold your things,

I’m speculating.

The coyote speculates on which organs might incur 

the highest prices. Who will enter the long chicken house 

from sunrise to sunset. Who will live in the bunkhouse trailers.

Who will be sponsored out of a detention center by a cousin of the coyote.

II

My people come from southern Italy.

They eat the whole heads of small fish in large quantities when given the chance,

honeycomb of tripe stews with beans and onions.

The piecemeal factories don't care to pay to have refuse removed.

The reason they left the shores was hunger.

What mostly exists in this world is poverty

beside exquisite Duomos made from the bones of the prayerful.

Some never learn to read, or are not permitted into Brahmanical temples.

What has fueled the art collection of Cosimo Medici,

filled the archives of universities with the bones of Native people?

Some families and banks took the god of the cracks

(who can be found in puddles, lapses in the continuation of a pattern and crevices,

crags and liminal bits of music) and caged her,

a raccoon from a suburban attic, an injured turtle on the highway.

Let me tell you what happened to the Peruvian gold amulets tied into trees,

which made sweet wind music and moved like aspen.

These amulets, in the shape of bird wings, were melted into crude gold bricks by conquistadors.

What have we taken from the village of the rose seller?

What songs are unsung, from whose ears have we taken the breath, sound, 

name? 

Extraction and removal of what belongs                   (who says what belongs?)

to a particular coordinate on a map                            (who makes the map?)

 – who named this place where you stand?

The constant unearthing of what is inside the layered walls, 

space exploration must stop now,

tombs should remain intact, and we all must be uncaged.

My great-grandmother was a working woman,

she sank into the mines to abate a hunger, lost her right thumb down there,

came home covered in black coal dust.

Is there a way to harvest coal that protects the mountain?

III

Hunger is a wolf with fangs, 

the kind of hunger that lives in the Ivory Coast

I can only speculate

has its own shape and moves as it moves.

Every story in our lives comes back to here – 

who am I to remember those who sort through the garbage

for a dollar a day?

Remember the diamond mines, rough diamonds hidden in small parts of bodies.

Remember the tops of mountains once swelled like mosques and churches.

As we have discussed,

some are taken

in the night.

Some are cast like seeds in the Mediterranean swells–

some are planted.

That is what churches are,

they are places for planting.

Roots can pull the foundation

into several different directions, roots

eventually stop their reverse radiation.

What lives under us are the layers of life:

bodies of insects, snake skins, leaves, voles, cold sandy dirt, clay.

Pregnant girls are kept in modest rooms.

Like Mary, they are virgins,

wearing hospital cottons,

they are the daughters of the rose seller,

who has died his white hair with henna,

and resembles a tangerine.

IV

I’m not sure what to do about the story 

my cousin told me about a man who owned

a 24-hour store that sold everything: toys, plastic furniture, 

batteries, bleach, insecticide, e-cigarettes.

He shaved the heads of people Maria Laura knew.

Shoved them into boxes and intended to sell them for parts.

Why did he shave their heads?

Is this story true?

Here we find ourselves at the ugly crossroads, 

the mythology of a place is personal.

How different is this place from the Ozarks? 

I don’t know what to do with the fact that humans

are losing sheep,wool, linen, indigo, copper, sleep,
winter, uranium, gold. Light 

pours in nonetheless. This may or may not be the end

of the meadow,

which is not a small thing.

Paisans speak like there are marbles in their mouths,

most of them have never read a book

but know the epic poem ‘A Livella by heart.

The women make a brown broth from beans.

We sit in the car outside the optical shop 

while my cousin goes into the bakery.

I watch dozens of men from the Ivory Coast,

Bangladeshi men too sitting in the piazza of the church

where my grandfather was baptized.

V

The red rose

is erotic to everyone

its thorns, perfume,

that it can be eaten.

The rose sellers carry dozens of roses—

versions of an animated plush toy in the shape of a cactus.

I’m remembering the first time my oldest child laughed,

just when I thought mothering was a one-sided act

I caught his bright eyes in mine.

I watch the rose seller light up, he uses a laser pointer to capture my attention,

he throws a jelly ball up into the air.  It beams a mosaic light on a swath of us.

When I look away and look back, his face has fallen

a Bell’s palsy hidden before, his swollen eyes tired.

Roses can be used to sweep grief from the ears.

Felicia swears her life was saved

by limpias with roses.

When I was 15, I received two dozen roses from the son of the gardener.

I should have taken the petals off the flowers, 

laid them on the grass and invited that boy to lay with me.

But shame has always kept me from 

the kind of acts

that open flowers.

I wonder what the effects of his proximal relationship with roses is?

Holding them close to his chest, the oil of roses on his hands.

Diamonds in the ear canals of people.

How did we come to mark love this way?

VI

In Catholic schools, girls wash their faces in a basin of rose water once a year.

The body of Mary is holy,

her craggy walks and donkey rides not dissimilar to the path north

taken by pilgrims today heading to Texas. 

The body of every person 

is holy.

What is sacred is the way the earth holds contradictions.

Sprayed with insecticide, the rose 

can be a weapon

against the earth, but unlike yucca and cyanide, 

cannot make a broth.

This is the inferno, 

or is it paradise?

There are pounds and pounds of plastic water bottles, 

bits of glass, crates, disposable diapers,

reams of bleached paper.

There are lavender fields, yellow 

spring mallow. There are men with automatic weapons slung

over their shoulders. There are sweet children sleeping in the afternoon 

light as their parents sell bracelets in the piazza.

We can make statues of children and hold them up

on marble pedestals in our gardens, 

but can we hold children in our arms again?

Theology should be centered on children and those who pass them into this world.

VII

Everything rests on the shoulders of the rose seller,

his cell phone tethered to home.

I’m speculating, 

I was born in New York City in the days when the hologram was born.

I’ve grown with the monster, it is my twin flame.

Perhaps it started with the steam engine

propelling white men faster than buffalo herds.

There is something terrible that I am sorry to say, 

you must remember:

the buffalo were shot from trains and with them died everything holy.

Everything holy

will return in the form of a grandmother.

Her smell will be roses, asafoetida, onions, July, ashy and hazel-ish.

Sleep will carry you

in her arms

which hold bones

as old as fire, arms 

as long as spider legs.

Have you heard of the spider woman? 

The New York Times calls this the Cayotecene,

because in this time you cannot know 

what is trickery.

I am a bone woman

this house of bones

wants mosaic floors

and hot water flows.

I am a cell divided

into two equal parts

half sovereign

half unified.

My marrow is mallow flower pollen.

My name is Agnes,

Fatima, Nìamh, Brigid, Frieda.

I have a copper outline.

I have a spine made out of copper.

I was listening to you

when you closed your eyes

and told us your body was not a thing like lava,

a more precious ore.

I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 genders

I am on fire

outside.

I am listening to the radio.

Someone learned the Carnatic scales.

What does the rose have to do with the extinction of lichen? 

With the lantern flies

children are taught to exterminate?

Soon large spiders

shy, but deadly

will hide in the corners of our SUVs.

Soon the moment will pass

between us,

I’ll be dead 

in a mushroom bag

or in a glass vile in a suburban junk drawer,

I don't care.  You choose

what matters.

I can't see beyond my times,

you will not yet know your time is coming.

What does the rose have to do with us?

Those whose faces have never been washed with rose water in a marble basin,

those of us who cannot eat the rose,

or smell the rose 

because we have lost our sense of smell,

whose brains do not connect the disordered networks of migration.