I go to the hill of wood
to learn to speak the language of trees.
Waffles
Ketchup
Laundry soap
Blessed are the men who wear leather pants;
girls who have low-tolerance for ugly things.
Her vulva plump, luxurious, veined with a year of cherries
that grew in the thicket, she was older than the woods.
I knew the way to the hill.
In the springtime, a disguised Buddha spoke to me on an elephant.
We drank tea at the temple gate.
He raised his hands and vanished (vanquished)
into the dream of a husband riding an elephant.
I want to be an elegant woman, I said.
He gave me the riches of a stone villa overlooking the Mediterranean.
We drank notes–the celebrated pianist in the salon
staving the dove and the cuckoo bird in a Swiss clock
close at hand benediction.
Crippled in his joints and rippling the keys reeling in the faithful
lions and crocodile with plaid skirts,
the couples would retire at night to make love.
I painted the seawall and the boy on it fishing for squid
into the nighttime.
It is a pleasure to receive
notes from the living.
They are all young.
It is everywhere.
Bling
Absolutely
Wanton
Stretching inhibitions–
all the time
blaming rough surfaces
for tensions.
I will let go and into a feather mattress fall.
What am I trying to do, reasoning with
a girl with a mind like yours?
No rest for the weary when we get in.
Because you are thinking you want one—
a new notebook.
And how wonderful it is
the charmed smile of the girl
next door to the palace.
Places I go to study rings.
Each one a mild prick.
I am a treasure in a tree.
I am beautiful and I have visions,
A talent for finding the finest point.
The hill says its name El Cerro de Madera.
Struck with happiness inside a ship
with a broken mast and no cloth, I do not wander.
I sit at the foot of the hill of wood and eat its corn
& its bun with sesame seeds on top.
I go to the hill of wood, and there is no tenderness,
just the madness of lust with a broken mast.
Two lovers. They rode there from Chile on horses.
She is bare-bottomed and he is a strong chest.
They mount the animals too. I will remember this forever.
Horse and man. Horse and woman.
My ankles itch and the angles of my body
rare dipping into the quick sands;
my candy-stripe pants don’t fit. Because I am white
I go into the sun to scrape off the layers of chalk.
Swaying as I walk, I am hunted by the cavity of my body.
I could come down to you. I could borrow the phrases
of the two lovers at the hill of wood, the way they move, plundering (plying)
the hill with ashes and careful caresses felt on the tongue, the hair,
The cerebellum, flowering with heirs of orgasms:
I bore into the top of the hill, goosebumps sibiliant spit flying out.
I want the voice in the hill of wood to emerge
a woman with a bronze body, tall, slender, strong.
Ancient, and she is the perfect woman, the most interesting woman
in the entire world. She wears white linen, an A-line tunic, with gold
thread embroidered pyramids and owl on the front
& back with parrot-blue pants. Her hair is silver-colored and soft
and plenty & her face is not the colorless face of the old, but buttery
and ruby and tinged with copper. I want her to say to me: You too
are the most interesting woman in the world.
She is middle aged. She appears now with a round, plump face, like a perfect apple,
an aphrodisiac. Her voice is astounding the world. She says what she thinks and is careful and passionate about what she thinks. There are
no limits to the beauty of her body, to her grace, to her charms, to the way
in which she sits, just barely touching the seat of a chair, yet so comfortable. She dances with the fluidity of lighter fluid and the scent of scenes of history in the making—
She is the pope at the Vatican, she is the mistress of a statesman; there is no world to save or to make better; it already is that way.
She is young. Infinity. She is the kite that breaks off the string and flies into the wind.
In my notebooks, she is the captain of an industry of chandeliers
of milky pilk, opal, the milky, sea blue of colored glass, and bright green,
in graceful C’s turned on their back, swagged, melted
into a column of butterflies
pegged to a bronze shaft. I am in love with the world.
Nothing can be haphazard; it is either thought of or it is not. She shows
me the filing cabinet and opens the “B” drawer. Do you know
what I have in there? Beautiful thoughts.
She is the most interesting woman in the world & I have created her.
Life is sweet and I love it—the pastry with the pink frosting and
wonderful sprinkles; my mouth waters with the inhalation
tasting sweetness. The woman of the hill
climbed out of its hole on a whim. She says I am playing
hard to get and she wants nothing to do with the inconsolable.
It’s not that she is a hard woman but she has expectations
that people get what they want and ask for.
Hector the Great is the name of the rabbit that lives on the hill of wood.
Dipping into the victorious pool of water that my boat came in on,
I do it my way. “That’s right,” the woman of the hill of wood says.
Shirley and Laverne on bicycles.
We are finished now.
Finished with being spoken to. Finished with all of the “They say.”s
She calls them her fauna. Her pets. The man.
The woman. Vaporized.
I have notebooks and notebooks of drawings and words.
They are picture books with something for everyone.
My blood is letting into my vagina. I feel it as if
the universe has ejaculated into me. It is pleasant.
It is flowing out. I pay attention to how it trickles,
making its way slowly to the lips of the vagina
that want to close over the hole to keep the universe in.
The woman of the hill of wood is weeding her garden.
She looks into the rushes and puts down the rake methodical.
Her hair is combed. She bolts to the crest of the hill
and flings herself into a hole, as if she is a virgin sacrifice to a volcano.
I should have seen it coming because I am the one with the notebooks
with the drawings and the words and with the images I sometimes
cut out and tape to the paper. I am borrowing. Everything
to be created was always created. The woman of the hill of wood
El Cerro de Madera is a visionary, and she will not stand still
for the times as they are. She dives into the hole to come out
into a different place than the rest of us. I climb up the hill, too.
I drop myself into the hole.
AUTHOR BIO: Kristi Nimmo is a writer, painter, and meditation teacher. Her poetry has appeared in Mouse Tales Press, em:me magazine, and Yes, Poetry. She lives in Leesburg, Virginia.