I can tell you, sweeping the several jigsaw lizards
away from your casket, away from their expert
invasions, kneeling by the order of our births
alongside the mother-of-pearl mosaics,
the family at your death keeps to form,
having to act out that love of endings.
Gregarious in hunger, a flock of twenty
turn circles like whorls of barbed wire,
no spot below flown over uncanvassed.
The closer to death the closer they come,
waiting on wings with keen impatient
perseverance, dark blades lying in wake
until age or wound has turned canter
into carcass or near enough for them
to swoop scrupulous in benediction,
land hissing, hopping, tearing, gorging.
no portion, save bone, too durable
to digest. What matters cannot remain.
Brad Pitt and Kevin Bacon are in a boxing ring in the middle of a football field. They are both wearing white boxer shorts, no gloves, and about to perform a dance routine. I am standing next to them, looking at Brad Pitt’ s hair flop down over his face. He smiles at me before the music starts. From everywhere, broken glass bottles hurl at their bodies, and they are splashed with gasoline. We are also in a dark alley lit by fire. The two are still standing, looking over at me, though I can’ t tell who is smiling.
1.
some things, I knew,
were beyond choosing:
didu — grandmother — wilting
under cancer’ s terminal care.
mama — my uncle’ s — mysterious disappearance —
ventilator vibrating, severed
silently, in the hospital’ s unkempt dark.
an old friend’ s biting silence — unexplained —
promised loyalties melting for profit
abandoning long familial presences of trust.
tend their yard every weekend,
when they paint or straighten
the purple fencepickets canting
each other at the edge of their lot,
hammering them down into soil
to stand. How long will they stay
put? My neighbors mend their gate,
hinges rusted to blood-colored dust,
then weave gold party-lights with
orange lobster-nets & blue buoys
along the planks. So much to see
& not see again, each chore undone
before they know it. I love how
faithfully they work their garden
Slowing down your body enough to feel.
Thought you were at a standstill
but you were only slowing down enough
to feel the pain. There are worse things
than running to catch the train, twisting
your ankle, the afternoon fucked.
Running to get to or away from?
the stranger who helps you up
wants to know, you who are so used to
anything scribbled on a prescription blank.
Just want the pain to go away, you say,
surprised to find yourself
reaching for someone else's hand.
She took the spareribs out of the oven
and set them steaming on a plate
before leaving her apartment.
I didn't know how long to wait,
tore into cold meat when I decided
my mother wasn't coming back.
*
No one knew about the gun she kept
in her purse until the authorities
called — a.38 caliber pistol
with a pearl handle and a trigger
even she could easily pull —
her car still waiting to be towed
from a roadside ditch
when they arrived on the scene.
*
Last night I found my face below
the water in my cupped hands.
The mask made of copper and bone
criss-crossing to make a smirk,
a false glamour, a plated glaze.
I unwound myself from the heavy
machinery of my body's burden.
The lute, the light, chime.
I'll get up and partner myself
with music, the purple moon
peeling itself like a plum.
Men stand in a circle and
they will ask and ask again.
I want to pick the thick bud,
to lose myself in the body's posture
bending in or away, to let
Powder rises
from a compact, platters full of peppermints,
a bowl of sour pudding.
A cup of milk before me tastes of melted almonds.
It is the story of the eve of my beginning. Gifts for me:
boxes of poppies, pocket knife,
an elaborate necklace
made of ladybugs.
My skirt rushing north
There is something round and toothless
about my dolls.
They have no faith. Their mouths, young muscle
to cut me down.
Their pupils, miniature bruises.
I hear the cries of horses, long faces famished,
It wasn't holy so let us not praise gods.
Let us not look to them for bread,
nor the cup that changed water to wine.
Let us look to the bend of the road
that reaches. A silver blur across
the skyline, woman standing on the farm.
In her grasp, the shine that is seed,
that is beginning. She will work
the earth, bounty in the vault
of cosmos above her, heat
lightning that lassoes in its manic
current. Man never existed
