This Morning Read online

  And means to own my life again

  And flip it north to south,

  All my sweetest thoughts of you

  Dripping from his mouth.

  Half Mile Down

  My sick heart and my sick soul

  I’d gladly fasten in a bag

  and drop into an ocean hole

  to float in darkness as a rag.

  Would it learn to make its light?

  Maybe in a million years.

  A million years of constant night

  in which it can’t stop its fears

  flaring their nightmare tentacles

  and bioluminescent eyes

  as cold and sharp as icicles

  under moonless, starless skies:

  medusae, spookfish, cephalopods,

  jellies with no eyes or brains,

  lethal and beautiful as gods,

  locked in endless predation chains.

  How seamless then the world would seem,

  which life on earth never did,

  the living water like a dream

  crowded with prowling vampire squid

  that want only to stay alive

  among other monsters innocent

  of all but the pure drive to survive

  without self-judgment.

  Insult

  Before you went out I asked you

  in no uncertain terms to button

  the next button up your shirt

  that showed your naked breast

  from the right angle when you twisted

  and bent, an angle admittedly rarely

  reproduced in real-world space

  and then what would need to be in place

  is the mythical irresistible male

  whose lust could flare furiously

  (like mine) and push you ecstatically

  beyond where you sexually go

  with me. Obviously I don’t know

  what would be possible for you

  with a body other than mine,

  but I love you and yours so dearly

  the thought’s too much for me

  despite your saying your love for me

  makes the idea preposterous

  from the get-go. I’m sorry

  I spoke harshly. My jealousy

  is a jealous companion.

  It wants me alone.

  No Warning No Reason

  Because he left her, she must make him

  someone she doesn’t love, rescripting as

  deception their hand-clasped walks at dusk

  when she felt his was the hand of God

  linking her to him because she was

  so blessed to be given this love

  this late in life. It must have been lies:

  each touching word, all thoughtfulness,

  his shows of pleasure putting her first,

  his endearing sex talk that first

  amused her then got to her

  (his hot moist breath the poison in her ear)

  as he learned with seemingly selfless patience

  how to move inside her as no one ever had before.

  How can she change memories like these?

  He must have been lying

  because the man who did these things

  could not leave her with no warning or reason.

  But she knows he wasn’t,

  and, because she knows he wasn’t,

  she is stuck. No one can help her.

  No one can enter the sacred circle they made together

  she now wears as a necklace of fire.

  How can she obliterate the person he is?

  What is she to do? She has to live.

  Hard Times

  The lousy job my father lands

  I’m tickled pink to celebrate.

  My mother’s rosary-pinching hands

  stack pigs in blankets on a plate.

  Teeny uncircumcised Buddha penises

  (cocktail hot dogs in strips of dough):

  I gobble these puffed-up weenie geniuses

  as if they’d tell me what I need to know

  to get the fuck out of here.

  They don’t only stink of fear.

  They’re doom and shame and dumb pig fate.

  I tell my mom I think they’re great.

  Dad chews his slowly with a pint of gin,

  and says he eats a whole shit deal

  because of us. My mom’s in tears again.

  I don’t know who to hate or how to feel.

  My Young Mother

  What she couldn’t give me

  she gave me those long nights

  she sat up with me feverish

  and sweating in my sleep

  when I had no idea whatsoever

  what she had to do to suffer

  the pain her body dealt her

  to assuage the pain in mine.

  That was a noble privacy—

  her mothering as a practice of patience.

  How deeply it must have stretched her

  to watch me all night with her nerves

  crying for rest while my fever

  spiked under the washcloths

  she passed between my forehead

  and her dishpan filled with ice.

  That was a noble privacy.

  But even then there was so much

  unsayable between us,

  and why this was now looks so

  ludicrous in its old costume of shame

  that I wish not that she had just

  said it but that I hadn’t been

  so furious she couldn’t.

  Odd Moment

  Live your values said a voice

  that wasn’t a voice at all,

  although I heard it on the phone

  when I picked up the phone to call

  my mother, who died

  six months ago.

  What was I thinking of?

  I know

  she’s dead. I touched her hands

  (a knuckle, really—and very lightly)

  as she lay in the silk-lined box.

  I absolutely

  couldn’t kiss her sunken face goodbye

  as others were able to.

  After I knelt near her a while,

  there was nothing else to do

  because she needed nothing from me.

  How can a life just be done?

  Done also what life was to her

  alone, which no one

  else can comprehend,

  even (or especially) her son.

  Is this why I forgot she’s dead

  and picked up the phone

  to punch in her number

  believing she’d answer,

  and my brain said what she’d say

  to me? Is she not done with me?

  In the Mirror

  The death I see

  coming to me

  stops to chat

  more frequently.

  “How’s my good man?”

  he asks, all grin

  and bonhomie.

  He can get in

  any body-hole.

  I squeeze mine shut,

  don’t even breathe.

  He can hear what

  I think, so I don’t,

  except for Go.

  Because he’s fast,

  I try to be slow—

  slow as prehistory,

  slow as a stone,

  slow as eternity,

  slow as alone.

  “I am Alone,”

  he boasts. “It’s fun.

  I get to kiss

  everyone.”

  His lips become

  a luscious bed.

  “A kiss from me

  and you’d drop dead.

  “I’m the last one

  you will see.

  If I were you,

  I’d be nicer to me.”

  What in the world

  would that mean?

  I’m afraid to ask.

  Something obscene

>   no doubt he looks

  red hot to say.

  Is it possible

  death is gay?

  “Of course I am—

  or, rather, bi.

  How do you think

  women die?”

  He heard my thought—

  I forgot he can.

  “Why would you want

  to be a man?”

  I finally ask aloud.

  “You are thick,”

  he replies. “If you were

  a brick I’d be a brick.

  “I’m the mirror

  of your sorry soul.

  I reflect you

  completely whole.”

  And when I look

  I can see

  him melting back

  into me:

  his lips, his eyes,

  his razor brains.

  My doughy wrinkles.

  My spider veins.

  II

  The Dog

  The neighbors’ baby died age one month

  so they’re off to Big Sur “to celebrate her life”

  and I stupidly agreed to feed their dog—

  a twelve-year-old wire-haired mix, half-blind,

  half-dead itself, its gum lines receded to a rictus grin.

  What was I supposed to say when the husband asked?

  “Your baby’s dead, but I can’t be bothered.

  I don’t really know you. Ask someone else.

  I don’t like your dog. I think it’s hideous.

  What if it dies while you’re away?

  I’m supposed to call and tell you that?

  I don’t want to touch it.

  What if your misfortune is contagious?”

  But I said, “Be glad to,” and he embraced me,

  this Kurt or Kirk, I’m not even sure which.

  “Siobhan”—that’s his wife—“can’t stand to kennel her,”

  he sobbed into my shoulder, his eye rims moistening

  behind his clownish owlish oversized glasses

  he knocked askew against my clavicle.

  It startled me so much I couldn’t guess

  who “her” referred to until I got he meant the dog.

  All her’s: the dead baby, the wife, and now the dog.

  I don’t like the dog. It stinks. It needs a bath.

  Who washes a dog during a month like that?

  But I’ll be damned if I’m going to do it—

  dried dogshit or worse matted in hair

  the color and texture of rusted wire

  caked with rotted moldy drywall.

  The dog howls all day—and I mean all day—

  as if these were the feelings left inside the house.

  From outside all month the house had been silent

  except the one time early on the paramedics came

  so the neighborhood knew a disaster was happening.

  I never doubted for a moment there was wailing inside,

  including the baby’s, which must have been constant.

  But the dog didn’t howl until everyone was gone.

  Siobhan has to be forty-something—

  They supposedly did a doula water birth at home,

  her husband assisting, no doctor, no amnio,

  no genetic testing—I think they belong

  to some megachurch where the pastor

  the size of a fish stick from the bleacher seats

  projects fifty feet high with his bleached teeth

  and they sing-along upbeat Christian music

  ten thousand strong, as loudly as they can.

  “To celebrate her life”: the pastor’s phrase, I bet.

  If that helps them bear it, fine.

  All I know is I have their dog to deal with.

  One thing I’m not doing besides wash it

  is walk it, so I called a franchised service

  that sent a Belarusian with a crescent nose stud

  (God knows what his story is)

  who rang my doorbell after half an hour.

  “I can’t walk dog,” he said. “It won’t go.

  It won’t leave house. I think it sick.

  You better take it to vet.” So I did.

  Again I picked one from the phonebook,

  who charged me eighty bucks to find a loose tooth,

  although he offered a thousand dollars’ worth of tests.

  “The dog is old,” he said. Oh. Thanks.

  Then I tried at home pretending the dog was mine,

  actually petting it (a bit) and talking in goofy baby tones

  while giving liver chips and Buddy Biscuits and playing fetch,

  but, while I napped, it scratched off the front-door paint

  and started gnawing its way out.

  After I gated it back in the neighbors’ kitchen

  with its blanket and bowls and dried bull pizzle,

  it began howling again, which is what it’s doing now.

  Maybe there’s something in the house still.

  Maybe tiny syringes and bandages upstairs

  the dog smells. It would be too odd to go up there

  where the baby was, into the baby’s room,

  with the neighbors’ hopes there as furniture,

  pink bunny or smiley angel or kiddie Bible wallpaper.

  It would be like being inside their privacy,

  their intimacy, their monthlong nightmare.

  Maybe I have to call them after all.

  I hate to call them—they should have peace

  to grieve enough to live again in a house

  that no matter what they believe or understand

  will never be for one moment as they thought.

  I don’t know what else to do but call them.

  Their dog—their ugly old dog—is howling for them

  and will not stop.

  Mug

  Glaze crazed and lip chipped, my beloved mug

  has suffered one too many Hi-Temp Power Scrubs