Welcome home, a strawberry plant
grows out back
for you, but it
has twisted to fingernails
to scratch away the bugs.
It has a heart, ready for transplant.
I promised to die,
I admit, I’m in the habit,
but it just sat in one spot,
sucking on water cells
reminding me what it
would feel like to overheat.
Now you are here, hiding in
the desert, my fruit not fertile
enough for you
to eat.
So, you say it’s the center of time,
one hand holds it,
the other says good-bye.
I spend a thousand blinks on old memories.
Each taste like cocaine
broken teeth, pressing
truth against my cheek, a cold shock
like this one –
crying on the beach, sleeping in empty sea shells.
My mother eats her hands,
choking on emptiness,
on regret – I understand,
then –
fireflies above my nose.
Bathing with my naked sisters,
collecting our shadows full
of sea water – and with a rush of the moon
a tip of years comes rushing back
and I choke, not on emptiness
but on regret, and I understand
then –
it’s the same sun that passed away,
roasting flames with me on
Sunday; and what does He do?
He moves.
It starts with a doorknob,
a brass trombone turning out
mouse squeaks.
Tiny little mouse pellets
squeeze out of my pores.
I watch them drop to the ground.
Still, waiting for respect.
But, it started with a violent door.
Swinging away from force,
away from poison palmistry,
which, in fact, I read.
Which, in fact, I understood.
Or it was the mouse being
meek; naive.
I swing with doors now. After wooden frames
attack my conscious, I become sub.
I create layers of plumb paste up,
licking drywall,
growing asbestos,
swinging from summer to fall,
landing in winter igloo’s to be swept away
by spring baby sprigs.
Only the mice can bring me back.
Salt sweeping palms turning
yellow bellied
rats, wringing out gathered droppings
of last year.
Only the mice remind me
of stagnant feces laying around
my house,
my home.
And with a cold, slick doorknob,
I turn my insides
out.
Emily
walks with rotting feet
turned out
old
birthing hips
rock
with her jellyfish
spine
her path has become
as thin as her
starved bones
a
tight
borderline
between survival and
extinction
Emily
with her nervous order
steps
slight
whispering steps
onto
an aimless rope
an unambitious line
unstable
intimidated
weak
battered
uneasy
shrinking
Emily
walks
maggiemaeijustsaythis 