Little Boy

There is a leak in the Earth,
quietly letting mercy slip
out,
unnoticed.

Ashes sprout in Spring’s fresh
mouth – her lungs
blacken with ferocity,

a dark mother clouds the sky
of an innocent,
a soft snow lays silent,
begging the earth to warm;
a quick suicide.

Her arms cradle his delicate
voice, she is moon craters
and crackling fire embers,
an Earth of her own.

Heavy waves of blood crash through
a golden heart,
blue eyes sicken and he cries.

Her own waves say goodbye –
and the Earth opens one more time.

Morning Greets Me

Each morning greets me differently;
she kisses my cheek for love, or
spits down my throat for some other reason.
I used to hate her obnoxious light.
When I was a child I threw sticks
at her and swore I would do myself
in before she could. I made rope from vines
that her sun rays grew. I gathered
poison that lived on her sickly Earth
and piled them next to my bare toes
as they dug deep through the planets
coarse skin.
I think I sat in this spot, with my back toward
her for years on top of years.
She burned and blistered through my anger,
but I couldn’t see.

Until, one morning, my daughter greeted me,
sat softly next to my feet and reached deep into
the pile of poison
that I’d been saving for me.

She Would Know

I’m hungry.
My stomache tugs at
an old fetus, belly up,
a stutter in a hot month.

I think, I would paint her
like a spring egg,
or sculpt her like a chess game
where she could be queen

and cut off the eyelids of liars,
like I.

I would give her my hands to do with
all the weapons
and my tongue to speak with
all the words

she would know that she is not a pink
fluff laying on a pillow,
she is a sharp dagger,
a soft poison,

a prowess taking life by God’s
mighty light,
she would know

if she was not an old thought,
if she was not a small white stutter
stabbed out of the clutches
of my womb

she would know.

Incarnation

She would rather I be an incarnation, a flower
on a grave. She made my slumber rough with
sand until I swept it out of my bed.

When I was small, I brought all the worms
and the flies
and the bees
out of the water with the last bit of life
they had left.
For the ones who didn’t survive,
I gave proper burial with mermaid songs.

She never told me that mermaids cannot sing,
and she never picked up
a stick to
dig a grave with me

because I am not re-used bones
and skin
and life.

Texas LongHorn

Up north, near borders and manure,
a woman lives with a Texas LongHorn.
She grows red potatoes and
asparagus in spring water.

She nudged her children
with long pitchforks, for all the years
that she could.
Poking,
prodding,
until ladybugs and snake skin
wrapped her
thick construction sick.

I had a son. White ash hair,
marble blue sight.
The woman’s Ladybug’s tampered him.
So, he trampled them!
One after another.
Crunch. Crunch. 

Like good mother’s do, I told him “NO!”
He cried.
I sneezed,
and when I did, my poor soul
escaped.
No woman blessed me.
No child cried.

But, that woman! That woman with her potatoes,
and her asparagus,
and her giant Texas LongHorn
grew beastly horns that
poked,
that prodded,
sharper than pitchforks.

Frozen Pond

I have no room of my own. My carpet
was eaten by a vacuum with cold, blue
eyes.

It was January when kitchen plates
shattered. My diamond party,
shattered.
My calm-moon baby,
shattered.

I took her down stairs,
three times to
the snow.  We walked.

To an icy snow pond. Cold
like those eyes we left
three flights up, alone, with a balcony
and needles filled with snow.

We did not skip.
We did not hold hands.
We held breath and
walked into the pond.

I only had two hearts
because she had
one
of her own. Deep pink.
Beating on her own.

Deep.
Deeper.
Through sharp water cold.
Piercing cartilage, straight
through bone.

We gazed through crystal, an open
body,
singing laws of the nameless,
her,
freezing within me.

It is May now, plates have been cleared.
Cuts have scarred
deeper than bone. We are froze in that pond, but I have only one heart now.

I am alone.

She Snaps Like A

She snaps like a
twig from a
dead oak tree
She snaps
her fingers,
one,
two,

THREE!!!!!!

Standstill! Who will
draw first

Three sisters, count them.
One.
Two.
Three.

Huddled in her meat cleaver,
she leaves them.
Dead meat.

Red, raw
meat for the taking.
Marinated to
manipulated savory.

Three girls with
guilt blonde hair. Three
scared
little witches, fixing burns,
breaking dishes.

That’s what happens when the
flip switches,
she twitches into
rags –
stomping floorboards,
dropping little blonde
hair into body
bags

feeds dirty lies
from her
mothering, smothering hands.

In The Desert

June,
avalanche came with hammers,
pounding cradle into coffin for me,
smashing off these fingers that wanted.

(St. Louis opens boiling arms
while I drag these
empty things.)

I searched through snowflakes
to learn how
to carry rubble,

I came too late!
It was next spring.

I fell!

Debris soaked
by snow melt,
carried down river,
handed over to desert land;
an arid cough.

Dry woman are vultures!
Using neck,
hair,
steeples,
as steps. A pyramid!

Waiting for their turn.
We reach
pyramid tops
with them, our own tears betraying us,

slipping our own steps.

We fall,
down,
down,
down,

bottomless!
Hopeless!

While dry woman take our
place
as Mother.

Sclerotic Dolls

Back to my dolls. Back to familiar,
sclerotic faces.
Mother gave me one to paint. I chose
the sea for her eyes
and
cuspidated obsidian for her mouth.

She was a fill-in.

Mother howled in on muscle pills,
red cheeked fury
steaming the air, burning my hair from
its soiled roots! My bedroom door opened
itself out of her way, scarred from past poundings.

I dove under my bed, throwing
my rock-like doll to stand as daughter.
She never turned into an
apple-polished quail. She just stood.

I laid in yellow paint under
bed frames; thick structure.
And never gave Sclerotic Doll
a name.

 

The Tolley House At Green Gate

I share a broom with Virginia
and Miriam, I
have not had the pleasure
of either of the two
Green Gate
maids,

but I know
that their knees squeak louder
than mine
and
that
elbow oil lubricates their
twists.

I can tell by
the way they leave
my broom settled
in
corners.

Its
terse whisker
stick
mocks my grip,
my sweeping angle.
I try
to lead our waltz but my
broom laughs at me,
certain of my clumsiness.

We fight for direction
over the
trite,
Tolley boards
of the old Tolley
House.

Mr. Tolley had taken a wife…

Sarah;
a one-legged chicken farm
who burst babies
all over these elderly boards, then
cleaned them
herself as ten of her children
rolled their deathbeds atop.

Virginia and Miriam must
remind my offensive broom
of Sarah.

Sarah and her discipline.
Sarah and her doctrine.
Sarah and her ten dead babies.

I think my broom is in love with Sarah.

It refuses
my suggestive
movements to clear
old dust from the floors.

I have no choice, I decide.

I toss the broom out
to
a patio
that hosted a Tolley family portrait once,

grab my very own electronic
sucking machine
and suck the dead babies
out from
abysmal,
woe coated
slits.