history

every night I dream about you. you and twins others who match but only slightly. I dream of screaming at you, accusing you, telling you one by one all the things that gutted me, I dream of missing you, hating you, finding you on the street, you forgetting my face, I forgetting yours. I dream of regret, of searching for you, of panic, of the desire to un-do. I dream of freedom, of rejection, of spitting in your face, of your arms splayed out in dead-air, of couches containing other women.


I dream of turning my head, falling
down stairs, an empty party
that left the curtains in shambles.
I sew and sew, all I see are rags
on the walls wrecked to the core. I fit
the fabric together, bit by bit.
Now, at least, I don’t encounter your face,
only yards and yards of clawed-up muslin, endless
feathered fibers, the mending
of fabrics rotten with moths.

I set my teeth, clumsy with the needle,
and swoop in again.

forks

I suppose I’ve found a bit of love,
but I’ve also had my share of waking
mornings to find the silverware miraculously
flown up out of its neatly closed drawer,
piking the cupboards like javelins into a clean lawn.
I’ve spent my share of days
unlodging errant cutlery and still others nostalgic,
eyes catching on the gouges.

You, fork and knife, your
prongs and serration
forged and sharpened
for the tearing of gristle and sure-handed
slicing of flesh, from you I would have
expected this. But, spoon?
your comforting slopes carrying mashes
of grief, outmeals and applesauce,
all these years to my still, slackened mouth,
you seemed more innocent.

for austin

compassion

My own brother, childhood altered immeasurably
by my induced sloppishness, saw me
bow down in defeat
before countless crushed powders
and eye-glazing bottles. All those years
I spent crashing into doorframes,
somewhere in the eves sat a boy crouched like a fetus,
wondering how to pray someone back
from the act of self-burning.
You could not have understood, my love,
though your mind twisted itself in attempts
to recognize my face.

We are older now and I have
lost the death-lust, but I have heard stories
of his magnificence. How he would not
turn some girl out into the streets, though
she lined her purse with the cutlery and
burned spoons in his bedroom. He
could not do it. He said that could have been her,
that could have been my sister.

I can bear the weight
of gasoline soaked blankets
and am familiar with the burden
of a stomach full
of swallowed steel ball bearings.
I can move through sloughs
dragging ball and chain;
I can undertake a similar sadness.
I am not a fucking martyr, but the best
you know at leaving,
once I start the walking.

myth

Bulrush basket and my hands ached with the weaving.
It did not matter to me what you become.
A great king and a teller of lies?
A name written into abstraction with the telling of it all?
God’s favor is a flippant thing
and I have been a luckless woman,
but it seems I, alone, saw
the vanity of your pestilences and
the carving out an order for our people.

I too walked eyes bright with unpromised sand,
but still I saw you, lecher, gazing at our daughters.
All your sins quickly forgiven by a sea of
divided women lusting after vanishing greatness.
The swarming injustice put down
when no blood above the door
protects the sleeping faithful.

Myth-makers have had their way with me and
the telling of my own compassion,
but I, alone, know
that your drowning meant nothing to me.
I fought out against the sucking mud that day,
the river heavy with heat and undercurrents
of serpents, and looked only forward.

gasp

you are my bottomless basket,
the moment my pocket’s unthreaded and
the purse strap is broken and the crowd’s all
upon my new reading glasses.

you are the baby that belonged in his carriage.

I only stare at the bricks all
rushing upwards.

R

Ash

We’ve been told and we believe
that ash covers the earth like a second skin.
The bomb has finally hit or
a second pompeii, perhaps, forcing us, you and I,
to take cover under three thick stories
of entombment. We wait for a sign, day by day,
until to stay, we fear, means
these cremains pressing into our nostrils
into our ears, deafening us to death.

So I, careful, cut away a dry square of wall
with you, love, right behind me and I promising
oh god let us have our life together
let us climb through the black soot up
into a life that I won’t squander again.

And you say
hold your breath, we will go
together—choking—
I move away my patch of wall and force these hands
up through the roof, through filthy sheets of plastic
and into our uncertain escape.

Yet I find the earth not changed. There is no ash.
A year’s imprisonment with blacked-out windows
spent in anxious planning and
begging god’s pardon for nothing.

Now we have our life together—nothing stops it.
But I don’t believe in god.
I, sideways, glance at you and say
you got three dollars, dear?
I’m out of cigarettes.