Barbara Joan Schaffer

COMPAGINATION

 ‘Compaginar’ - Spanish, to join, unite, couple; to compaginate, collate. In Spain,’follar’ simply is to fuck. Its original meaning was to fold and collate sheets of paper to create a folio.

Where we are on the same page
we fold into each other,
collate.

How little dialogue there is between us.
You relate picaresque episodes of your life;
I take notes.

The past is prologue; I wait for the page on which I appear, where the leaves fold together. Remember the weekend in the mountains? I was as nervous as a bride on her honeymoon. I posed for erotic photos. You beat me at dominoes. We slept, the chimney caught fire, smoke sucked out the air. “Wake up! We’re out of here!” I cried and saved your life.

My book is open to the chapter called Patience, or Hope.

There’s a breeze and I lose my place. I fall asleep with the book turned to one page, but in dreams the leaves fly. You are never as close or real as just before I open my eyes.

We gloss each other’s utterances;
the text is lost in the writing.

In the silence of the blank sheets we fold into each other;
we collate;
we compaginate.

TOP

BLACK BUTTERFLIES

Night strikes the flinty dawn - a milky glow, then emergent form.
Tropical mornings come on fast, no rosy fingered foreplay here.

Alone in the bus station waiting-room, eyes fixed on a glass wall of 
   darkness,
I suddenly discern the chain-link fence at the end of the parking lot
and houses previously announced by the cocks’ chorus.

The fissures and pitfalls artfully covered with braided words
were beyond the limits of sense and experience.
When he stepped off the coach from Mexico City, I stumbled
into his rage like those enormous black butterflies
that smack you - neither flower nor predator - blindly in the face.

TOP

IF IT WEREN’T FOR SEX

If it weren’t for sex
I would disconnect,
if I didn’t know
what a man can do.
If I didn’t know desire
-- body mimicking mind --
desire for connection
finding relief in the flesh.

I am not empty but full with myself.
I desire a man who is filled with himself,
a man who can defend himself,
who knows the difference between
a challenge and a threat.

Image of saint in church in Nopala, Oaxaca.

The lacey panties on the bedsheet,
the sweat, the arcane practice
of the rite of sex where the body mimics
the rapture of mind.

The barriers that must be surmounted
as we ride with the hunt in rural Virginia.
Oh, my life has been some frolic,
a cheerful jaunt in the woods!

The pain is gone; I have outlived it.
Suddenly I am old.
Youth is tears. Babies cry all the time.
It begins when a balloon pops and we don’t cry.
With time we become hard, unfeeling,
accustomed to pain and disappointment
like the nose to scent.

Love hurts more now.
There’s so much more to love
in a person at a certain age
and so much more to hurt.

For the sake of argument, let’s say love is a game.
Win-win, lose-lose or the alternative
win-lose, lose-win.
Some men love to prove themselves,
to win a woman and then let her go
once her job is done.
I refuse to believe that I am complicit.
What does it mean to rise to a challenge?
Co-evolution -- a man and a woman
shaping their behavior to meet
the expectation of the other
whom we hope will meet
our expectation.

As long as I am in the business
of conjuring you up,
I ask what kind of man takes his pleasure
with a woman so easily dominated,
who being enthralled uses her wits
to escape and enthrall?
We will not conquer --
not you, not I.
We will collaborate,
my eyes lighting your path,
your eyes mine -
two people on the same path
until they diverge.

To say we love for the wrong reason
is to deny the reason for love.
What if my lover doesn’t understand me,
mistakes me for someone else?
Or I the same?
New love is rife with misconceptions,
each affair an abortion. No, not that!
Each affair shines its light
into the world. The fire of passion
lights up the world.
Another person’s happiness affirms
the possibility of fulfillment,
no matter its transience.

The body mimics the mind
in the depths of its desire
crude, demanding
infantile.
What is as pure and copious as
the tears of the jilted lover?

We spent time together,
time the measure of the path,
time on mountains and in dark valleys
that aren’t measured on any maps.
The distance between being too easily frustrated
and patience has not been established.

I have diversified my portfolio--
castles in the sand, gold in the sea.
I measure my losses to my gains,
because I am not insensible to pain
I am still a player, still in the game.

TOP

Barbara Joan Schaffer

STRAIGHT DOWN RAIN

Straight-down, hard-on rain:
the palms barely flutter their fronds,
thunder paced like planes at LaGuardia

Chila, Oaxaca 2/14/04

I await the onset of yellow crabs, beetles,
frogs in the shower stall.

The street overflows its banks:
it’s Sunday and old show tunes
spike the digital air waves.
The fronds pick up speed to louder claps.
Even as the rain pauses
the earth fairly hisses
I’ve Got Steam Heat.

The pavement flows and empties:
people emerge, my attention wanders.
Eventually the sun falls from sky to ocean
unremarked.

Chila, Oaxaca 2/14/04

TOP

Barbara Joan Schaffer

ON THE DOWN LOW

On the down low we watch
back to back cable
in a cheap hotel
window on the air shaft
you close the curtain
as if a brick wall could see.

TOP