Gleaned

The birds were feeding
                                 and on fire              I swayed
on hinges                                                 blue

          November light poured from me      the stones

          of my teeth dug from shallow earth

My mother died

                              her eyes                     the color of a Brueghel field

          I looked out one window                  the great heart of earth

                                        no longer beat

Moonless and close      I ate by the door      rose to be blessed

                                                                in a room not my own
I was bright fruit
                              unbroken til then.





  Shiva

We misunderstood our luck
growing up in that house —
third from the corner, where the forsythia

bloomed, as though to mock us, and my brothers hurried
down the street with a handful of bees in a jar,
for father who had a thousand demands,

who did not easily love, but was loved, who put the boys
in their place with a razor-tongue — afraid to let go of them,
yet keeping a distance — who lacked the know-how to father,

who struggled—feeling diminished in their world as they aged—
who held in his pocket the several sorrows of the world
when the boys grew older and first one, then the other died.

My father, who refused to hold shiva, though he sat fixed
for a week beneath the shrouded mirror. Friends
came anyway, pressing against us like broken stalks

under an impossible weight, some hugging casseroles,
others with bouquets, surrendering the bare-throated
flowers, a continuous loop of murmured comforts

feeding the machine of our grief. So many things
disappear in the world: lilacs. Even the bending light
leaves, though the windows linger.

Unaccounted for, the long-numbered streets.
A river that once flanked our city.
And father, overwhelmed and immovable,

withdrew, watched as those who could leave, left
the wreckage of our home. But the world
demanded, go on.





  I Never Wanted It So
               after Carol Ann Davis

It was summer.

It was summer and the aloe wanted none of the rain.

It was summer so the fields gave the finger to the sun.

It was summer, air, thickened by heat, gave in.

I heard a breath from my lungs corrupting

the air, maddening June nights

only to displease myself. Because I never thought

that was a way to settle me. Summer was a bitter sham

in my bitter mouth. Summer was everyone standing

in the standing room. Though I hunted,

no one came my way. My impulse cowered.

And in the corner, summer’s darkness, by chance,

gave me away.