Silencia, this glue that keeps
our wilderness whole,
began (I suppose) in
the cold belly of your grave.
The moment my father spied
cancerous cells,
sperm of the hideous rape,
swimming yet fixed on the glass.
Adjusted his eyes, shut their lids
to match the casket's creaking sound.
I followed his feet to the bar,
chugging a bottle, bleaching your visage,
pushing the head of the bobbing duck
under the surface of foam.
You are the white radish
with a hidden sting -- the garden with bite.
So we stroll on stone,
keep our toes inside our shoes,
lace them with whatever fix
seems palpable and easiest.
There are questions alive arching their curves
in the pill of your tomb.
Its door was not meant to be closed.
My curious mind -- the leprechaun
and snakish fang shelled by her smile,
seducing his heart to pound again --
its echo had practically rendered him deaf.
I imagine your face, a musical wound,
a bubble of soap that popped.
Water developed a permanent chill.
I blathered for years about NYC --
smoldering fog and cold cod shells
of people, just people,
peddling gray dollar signs,
watching black limos flog the poor.
Their chatter over
red ravioli sauce
sticking to bused lips.
Lapping their easy Perrier.
Their symbol, the steel penis
of scraped skies,
cathedrals shaved to fit
in the greed palm,
just whisper now,
a fading wail.
I am wondering
at my faux green brain,
willing this city gone
for prairies it stole.
Ash of my wish, brambles
of word, now haunt me.
The half-egg of
a fireman's hat
cracks my sleep.
It's quiet now, like a
throw-away shirt without arms.
Just holes and pork chop ground
pummeled by rain.
Clothesline rags for walls of home
says CNN of war-torn borders
braided by burkas, littered with corpse.
Swastikas of violence for evening stars.
My curious eyes prying the mouth
of the gritty clam.
Distended bellies stretch
their spandex mockeries.
The camera bolts -- a limping horse
searching for loose reins of truth.
A child's head is large --
a suitcase of lost innocence
on flattened tires,
bouncing in the deep like ducks
in potholes of a battle zone.
I can hear the shutter's click
stealing your pride,
now barefoot and cold.
My pupils are warts in your mirror.
Here in liberty's grass,
so far beyond your hungry lips,
a storm smells like hot soup.
My doorknob seems a luxury
I didn't feel, I didn't smile as I turned.
Stark in its shiny brass.
Smug in the click of its lock.
A curfew of fog makes city roads
a lump of coal. Sachets of sweat
drive the clock's slow hands.
There, on the cardamom dirt,
batik of sorrow streaks your chin.
An eight year old weaves carpet threads
from 4 a.m. to way past dusk --
day after day after day after death,
working for money to earn him a crumb.
Lives in the thin strand of hope --
an eyelash on porcelain snow.
The moon is an egg
you would eat if you could.
"Can you believe she's 21 --
old enough to drink," you say
as if a bottle's cork can dance
and exit is the final trump.
As if it takes the Northern Star,
dresses up a common prong,
sharpens runners on a sleigh
and divvies up the filthy snow.
Pouring, pouring boring chatter
floating us like bloated fish.
You grab my glass by accident,
spit the tasteless water out
as if my triumph is your phlegm.
We exist in separate worlds:
I see mine as constant swimming
in the prose -- yours corroded
organ pedals sinking to the ocean's plinth.
The albatross of wishful high
beckons me like hooting owls.
I wore those imitation pearls
until they choked my spineless neck.
"Let's have a belt": a crazy path
with potholes calling to my knees.
As if it keeps what doesn't fit
from falling, falling, thud.
This is the twine I cut.
Its split, split ends of tickled trouble
haunting sober's brittle blade.
The smell of wine is more than grapes,
more than poisoned hyacinth.
"These goblets cost a hundred dollars,
even fifteen years ago."
I think of time I wasted there.
Swollen toes in slippered lies.
Watch you like a pickled dolphin
never rising to the arch.
See your daughter blowing
on the splintered reed --
loving leaving's music so
a flute will never meet her hands.
The quintessential mother poem --
is ash in a granite urn for us.
A cleft lip that never sang,
except to utter the scar.
A corpse so deep in the grave
that only illusion could fly.
So I've taken to mirage.
Pictured you dressed
in a jasmine cloak,
whittled your lips
into a sunset of seedless jam.
The umbrage of dream --
something to lick in the night.
Your crazy hair turns honeysuckle
blooming over trellis teeth.
You are and you aren't
the slipper on a stubbed toe.
We are a blank file
that pesters my quill to write
with the moon's white continuance.
I fashion a bronze dancer from bone.
Create two flesh parentheses
that would have made
a sentence whole.
I stretch some word
over our missing breast.
The nipple, of course,
Athenian ruin,
a monument of stricken love,
worthy of obsessing eyes,
a sweaty cuff, a sonnet's box
forked open by our wilderness.