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.

Creation Stories

Man was born in streams of milk
from Earth's whimpers in the night.
The Sky, twinkling archway with cigarette.
Father, dangled his pipe.

God shattered his fist.
Shut in the boughs of grace, furnaces
smoked God out.
Furies of our intersections
muddled God's laughter
and shrieks of our shame flags
flew like an oven,
or a Resurrection
of gut-sacks.
God, throbbing, squeezed the soil
and from Earth's wounds, Man slipped out.

His Mother cooed: "Man was born thirsty."
Man raged into her volcano breasts,
and they were minnows who slithered
upstream.
The Sky saw Man as a bastard
whose delicate eyes would jerk open
when suffocated or
whose body would drift
when washed too clean.
God loved the human rubbish until sundown.
Sky became twilight and
He gave man palms to beg with.