The child I left your class to have
Later had a habit of sleeping
With her arms around a globe
She’ d unscrewed, dropped, and dented.
I always felt she could possess it,
The pink countries and the mauve
And the ocean which got to keep its blue.
Coming from the Southern Hemisphere to teach,
Which you had never had to do, you took
A bare-walled room, alone, its northern
“Son,” said my mother,
When I was knee-high,
“You’ ve need of clothes to cover you,
And not a rag have I.
“There’ s nothing in the house
To make a boy breeches,
Nor shears to cut a cloth with
Nor thread to take stitches.
“There’ s nothing in the house
But a loaf-end of rye,
And a harp with a woman’ s head
Nobody will buy,”
And she began to cry.
That was in the early fall.
When came the late fall,
“Son,” she said, “the sight of you
Makes your mother’ s blood crawl, –
there was a remember when the mama was my girl
the mama was in my girl biding to turn
my girl turn mama when what I got turn to girl in her
my girl in my girl make my girl mama
they both mine
all three
I remember a when when I only dreamed dreams
but my dreams are remembers now
they a when
my mouth a cunt in reverse and my guts, nuts.
I nose the dark nursery, belly for my dick spurting ink at shit.
Fire. Arrow.
Water. Shadow.
you know no kid’ s name a word, but some shit-to-do.
no kid ain’ t shit but a map to its folk
traced by its folk to where they buried their folk.
took that shit that made me to make me make myself myself,
rolled in on papa’ s red nuts like they a fucking chariot.
•
these days my guts stay aching. my head an empty crib.
At least it helps me to think about my son
a Leo/born to us
(Aries and Cancer) some
sixteen years ago
in St. John’ s Hospital next to the Long Island
Railroad tracks
Atlantic Avenue/Brooklyn
New York
at dawn
On the rough diamond,
the hand-cut field below the dog lot and barn,
we rehearsed the strict technique
of bunting. I watched from the infield,
the mound, the backstop
as your left hand climbed the bat, your legs
and shoulders squared toward the pitcher.
You could drop it like a seed
down either base line. I admired your style,
but not enough to take my eyes off the bank
that served as our center-field fence.
We stopped at a farmer’ s house
before parking at the dock
that creaked over the river.
Rowboats for rent, five bucks
an hour, twenty for the day.
Deep water: I knew a canvas bag
was in the trunk. I knew lunch
would be roast beef sandwiches
and hot stew from a thermos,
chunks of carrot and potatoes
cut by my mother who slept
through the racket of our leaving.
I went over the other day
to pick up my daughter.
her mother came out with workman’ s
overalls on.
I gave her the child support money
and she laid a sheaf of poems on me by one
Manfred Anderson.
I read them.
he’ s great, she said.
does he send this shit out? I asked.
oh no, she said, Manfred wouldn’ t do that.
why?
well, I don’ t know exactly.
listen, I said, you know all the poets who
don’ t send their shit out.
the magazines aren’ t ready for them, she said,
Child
You've boarded me over like a window or a well.
Mother
It was autumn
I couldn't hear the students
only the music coming in the window,
Se tu m’ ami
If you love me
I went for a week's journey in soft ermine.
Darling, the ovals of your hair...
autumn leaves,
your hair the hue of rain-drenched bark, your voice:
Don't ever leave me...
When her recorded voice on the phone
said who she was again and again to the piles
of newspapers and magazines and the clothes
in the chairs and the bags of unopened mail
and garbage and piles of unwashed dishes.
When she could no longer walk
through the stench of it, in her don’ t-need-nobody-
to-help-me way of walking, with her head
bent down to her knees as if she were searching
for a dime that had rolled into a crack
