Tuesday, April 19, 2011

3-31-2011

A map of fish cages, my childhood is circular
fragments framed by the drape of
the land on this side, the sea on that side.

I was so young then; you were still a hellion,
unfolding like a lobster trap at the base of a lake

and I was a channel.
My fingernails spreadso
from my mouth, wide,
the images in my throat crawl out.
Clean calf,
I disappeared into the eyelashes
of the fade of the world, with little black hooves
and loyal white legs.

I remember when you were inside me then,
the darkness was silk that became a prayer in my blood,
cancer parted me like fevered sludge.
Horizontal in my river, poured your narrow banner,
your lower landscape,
your quick-bleating sod
and your ruined squall.
I gave you permission to kneel godless.
In your cemetery,
your wrists of agony
were caught fish in the bramble.

Looking back, the sweet hum of your nudges
was a jawbone,
thick-fingered and gray shaped.
I hissed at you,
and you, in low voices
asked to be hoisted and banished.
You, lifted by grizzly machinery,
were rusty as the joint of a decaying tooth.

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