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.
pigs prey to piggishnesses. get ate from the rooter to the tooter.
I’ m a hog for you baby, I can’ t get enough go the wolfish crooner.
the gust buffeted porker roll in the hay or laid down
in twig rapine. let me in, let me in.
Sound of the rain so I know
there’ s constraint
sound of the train
so I know commerce
has not come to a standstill
now they raise the barrier
now they set it back in place
What coats the bottom
of the surface of the sound
when the swifts come in
when the clerks come home
who will bathe the children
who will bake the bread
when the luff is tight
when the mainsheet
starts the boat underway
whatever you do don’ t
let the tongue slip
from its moorings
I am walking through water with one of my sisters,
the river banked with tiger lilies, the sun
like having a lemon juiced into your eye, our senile dog
ecstatic behind us,
and I am yammering
about my discovery —
a chest deep pool, sentried by trees
that caterpillars were killing
with their yearly carnival tents.
To invent the alef-beit,
decipher the grammar of crows,
read a tangle of bare branches
with vowels of the last leaves
scrawling their jittery speech
on the sky’ s pale page.
Choose a beginning.
See what God yields and dirt cedes
when tines disturb fescue, vetch, and sage,
when your hand dips grain from a sack,
scattering it among engraved furrows.
Snow would be the easy
way out — that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’ t give.
So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing
In through our bedroom window, the full dawn-scape concusses.
Difficult to sustain sleep's equilibrium of wordlessness.
Naming anything, like stepping barefoot in wet sand up to my ankles.
Name after name, sinking me farther beneath waking's buoyancy.
House, this morning, is pale with the rush of what night siphoned off.
Objects, still emptied of resemblance, hum their chord-less cantos.
Bloodless, my knuckles knock on walls without echo, testing singularities.
For knowledge, says the Old Sage, add; for wisdom,
subtract. My head in a surgeon’ s chair, checking
Lao Tsu’ s math as these teeth I barely knew
I had (mumbled of as wisdom) introduced
themselves — rude party guests — right as they had
to go, their pinched goodbye-hello. Like learning
you’ ve been speaking your whole life in prose,
or my late eighth-grade astonishment that I —
confirmed a Gentile in almost all respects —
had hung so long among the circumcised.
Plum black & the blush white of an apple
shoulder, melon & cream, in tones to list
the flesh; in light, washed colors off at last
& textures sheer with damp I slowly pull
from you with your quick help. Weekend's ample
procrastinations to forget the least
of what we want to do. April, half a blast
of cold, half new light, green & simple.
