That is all they
tend to talk about these days
the table.
The way he is laid out on it
and the trauma times.
Some piece of mind:
the apple,
the faces,
the ache
and others.
Nothing that comes and goes in the same instant as the last.
Well, it will stop
the crying and the phone calls
in time.
Sometimes even the trees can bend and break
they get so heavy.
Where we now fall
here, there
no point
to it
I guess.
The same thing said in the same place in the new year.
All in my mind
the counting of the proof points
older, tired.
He knew the hunger knot away to spell
of special says anything.
The earth fright over
the spur
of music
left missing
in minds.
Other songs play and we dance so slowly it feels like dying.
For no other reason
he stops moving and turns toward
the floor.
A fallen stretch taken a badly needed break
it’s a private moment.
The slur, his vantage
it, like
seen, my
feeling it
like force.
Some say his hands barely moved across the floor even when I sang.
Feeling this one more
I bake in the heat
and break.
Underneath the night turning towards the morning light
he keeps me there.
He did, having gone
having left
the thing
he least
clung to.
My eyes shut with patience and timid spans why it isn’t simple.
Mother, in her day,
would ask the simple, kind questions.
Do you?
He loved his mother, up somewhere in Michigan
among the other mothers.
In this pretend day
I weigh
my way
through her
mind and
it’s like this woman has an edge up on me and spits.
The light shuts off
and the air conditioner is loud:
it’s sweltering.
And like sisters who don’t care a lick
they care so much.
Not goes, but is
gone, like
several people
like Latin
and books.
They still keep writing, the writing ones do, and this is memory.
Each voice said something
similar, the blessings we have, really
being here.
Two legs to go home to, lucky you
you know the rest.
You yellowed that almond
and rose
to toast
the table
entirely silent:
“Eat, drink and be fucking merry, for tomorrow we have to work.”
I can see him
dry spirited and flanked soft aloof
on shelves.
I called him right before he left us
(he didn’t call back).
For no good reason
I fight
and try
to remember
him, gently.
Not a twist, I’m still here, and can manage, can barely manage.
