She spills red wine with
fish,
vulgar at the gills
sucking air into her lungs.
The moment at birth a
decision to breathe
at the cellular level,
the ultimate solitude shattered
and rebuilt in pieces,
interlocking pieces of plastic
to form castles and
forts. Jewish mothers at temple
when who but Krishna in
cut-offs shows up smelling of hashish?
The Sanskrit word for
mother is the simultaneous act
of walking away from and
towards.
How Kennedy ruined it
for all grassy knolls,
relegated back to small
round hills or green lumps of earth.
She stirs in sliced peppers
and okra,
an incantation of
gumdrops and primrose, a Choctow
chance of shifting flour
and fat into roux.
An amoeba’s worth of
guilt on the end
of a yo-yo discarded the
day after Christmas.
We drink midday for clarity;
we drink
in the evening to forget
the viper
her fangs and so begins
the handler’s
hollow tune of lull and
scatter.
A throbbing at the front
of the skull
where memories are
formed. The one
where your grandmother
arrived from California
and wouldn’t let go. The
one
where your mother laid
out your clothes
for Sunday school and
you imagined a flat boy
in starched collars who
might take your place.
Cowboys sleep outside so
they don’t have to deal with the overhead.
As my Uncle Rodney would
often tell the police officer
standing outside the
driver’s side window, it’s your job
to police and not to debate
the merits of taking my nephew
to the hospital after
having a few drinks.
Two times charcoal needlessly
pumped into my stomach
on the made-up suspicion
of poison. One time,
the doctor’s fingers
stuttered along my side for a Table of Contents.
Loneliness has a
gravity, a contract and pull measured
in the hum of a
refrigerator compressor, the start and stop
of the heat pump, and
the back-flow gurgle
of drain pipes with high
cholesterol and in grave
need of angioplasty.
I imagine the moment
when they remove my skull cap
and begin the literal
descent into madness
for a fibrous ball of
yarn no bigger than my thumb
against your lips
seeking moisture.
I imagine that moment,
the glisten of neurons
and the gray platypus
squeezed into a cantaloupe
so hard my fingers fight
to form finger holes and bowl
it across the produce
aisle and smack
into the dairy case. Not
even a crack,
the doctor admiring his
skill at the bone saw.
The top of my head on a
stainless steel table beside me.
It is at this moment
that I heard it, a mouse squeak
of a sneeze followed by a
hushed evacuation
of the room, leaving one
attendant adjusting the gas
so fog a thick of
butter, and then awakening in my room.
They said I dreamed it
but three courses of antibiotics to differ.
And when I went for my
follow up I saw her
coming out of the break
room, agitated and flustered
she walked away never
looking back, never turning
into a pillar of salt.
I still have trouble
with my T’s,
which is fine as I
prefer coffee. The absurd
similarity between porno
and rhino.
A seven-letter word for
magistrate. “Asshole,”
Uncle Rodney ducking his
head out of
the bathroom, a dollop
of shaving cream and
a crescent wrench of a
smile.
Van Gough as a child
wiping finger paint onto
a makeshift smock, an
old shirt of his father’s.
An uneasy bout of the
flu followed by
the slow simmer of mental
illness and what
we take as art was
simply the literal sandbar
of a man taking on
water.
A salamander on salary,
a salad of
salami and rye. She took
a milk crate
from the wall and set it
against the table.
poured herself a glass
until all that remained,
a cotton dress puddle on
the floor.
At the settlement
meeting I was asked
my sign. Uncle Rodney
welling up inside me,
carbonated spheres of
influence. Stop sign, I said.
Having established
rapport with the neighborhood
raccoon, we came to an
understanding.
A peanut butter sandwich
on a paper plate means
leave the garbage can
the fuck alone. As easily
as that, the ceasefire
is over and a morning collecting
paper towels, egg
shells, the occasional plastic tray
from a microwave dinner
that I wonder is recyclable
but don’t bother to turn
over to check.
A man on the street
stops me, places his hands
on my wrists and stares
at me through three layers
of urgency. He tells me
they’ve taken the island of
Kuwait, the whole thing,
they’ve taken the island of Kuwait
and put it in the Koran.
A white rose from
some special occasion:
Mother’s Day, wedding, simply
because he loves you but
slept with her again.
An entire country, a
white rose squeezed between
the pages of a book to
be divined before the final
walk-through. What to
keep, what to donate, the remainder
taken to a rented
dumpster on the front lawn.
Your sign, the man
across the table repeats and I realize
I have not answered. He
repeats a third time,
annoyed at my lack of
response. I stare
down at the swollen
violins inside my shoes, the only
sound, the color okra
knee-deep and rising.
- MK
