After the Funeral
When the winds
had toppled the dollhouse
had pushed over the oak
had made of windows
wrecking glass
and called me out
to greet the rain barefoot
to meet the sky nude
to wash myself
in muddy waters
and will my body
underneath
to touch the muted black––
when I had touched it,
had made my skin cargo
a carrion of ghosts,
when I had heard my sister
walk the shore
and woo me back
from boulders
mutinies of leaves, I
stepped from torrents
slick with silt
and waited
for her fragile grip
to take me back toward home.
Cradle the Wild
- for my sisters
Jacklight strobes
from fallen elms and ferries
itself over water.
Its drape a flash that settles
a second,
then slips away downstream.
Soon it will rain.
And the winds will shred
the boat
that dad had built, bury
it under the stones.
§
I am
told he
raised us
wailing,
studied
as our stomachs
swelled
to praise
the blooming
voice.
He poked
our hands, lips,
leaving
jaundiced dents,
and called
us out to cradle
the wild,
cracking
the heart’s
acoustic. Once,
§
I loved a woman
that loved a woman, who
admired a married man,
and waited
for her hand to reach,
to take me toward her warmth.
It went like that
for months: wistful thinking,
tepid tea, blue
rooms filled
with folded afghans, the torsos
of stringless guitars. Frosted streets.
Her eyes behind
a falling flame, narrowing
into their grief.
Listen:
§
beneath our feet a fire hums, beats its hands and hisses. If you press your ear against the ground
and greet it with your silence, you can hear a b-flat braid the stones, stirring the grass in the fields.