Gumbo

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