Tabitha Road

The first son fell from a branch
and broke his hip.
Dragged his steps

down empty roads             searching
for someplace to drink.
The second

found a woman twice his age.
Touched her
till she melted in the palm

of his hand
& pooled between his teeth.
He slipped on ice

& hit his head,
leaving him battered
with a brain badly swelled & a name

no longer his own.
The third I can't remember.
But the fourth

the youngest
broad & beautiful     eyes emerald flints
lived beneath the floor

listening to opera
& could be heard at noon practicing
his own pitch-less verse          a void

by which the birds banished
& magnolia
divorced their blossoms.

Snow swept months
over rows of barns
& fields that sprouted

barley & corn whittled
to feckless spears.
Once, after the freeze,

when the melt was gone
& wild lupine leapt
from creases of sand  I watched

the mother set a table
with quail & pickles
& whistle her boys in the yard.

None of them came     not one.
& the mother
dressed in red    reached

as though a plate were passed
nodding her head in thanks.
She ate & laughed

drank & laughed    shimmied
the small pond nude, then submerged
herself in sequined wakes

to mimic the motionless clouds.



Grief Flower

He knows
I hack rabbits

with the blunt
end of a shovel

and tie their
heads to trees.

He knows
I wait for fear

to un-glitter
the retina;

the round
orb receding

and the teeth
so tight

the tongue severs
shrivels

like charred raffia.
He knows

I light a joint  sway
my hips       snap

when Joplin
growls the blues

billows them out
in bleak echoes.

How I
pleasure myself

in silk winds
and float inside

dark waters
how I

stand above
dead things

and gaze.
Glory be

the worms
who whittle

it hollow,
the beetles

circadian thrill.
Glory be

the ants
and their

tireless toil
the buzzards

the maggots
their fill.

Glory be
this shadow,

shaped
like my father,

who wanders
the woods

with a whale
bone accordion

to woo out
the bluebells and
                    




Static Honey

That morning
when the sky snapped

and from it rain
rocks of ice

my lover stroked
my whiskered chin

& whispered me up
from a dream

in a room,
a sunbird smashed

in her hand.
She started to weep

ask for salt     the boy
inside her silent

& the both of us prayed,
& a hand

suddenly
started to squirm

hooking the stairs of her ribs.

~

For months,
she mulled static   braved fists

bloated where
the hunger burrowed    burned

like a boat without rudders.
All for a boy

with a name
meaning Messenger  Lord with us

meaning  letter rolled
in a pigeon’s beak  rousing

a roomful of spies.

~

The day
he wailed from womb I

heard my
daddy’s boots     his tenor

two strikes
scrimmaged      to soften

uncured leather
& started to scream. I

worried too
his tongue was warped

                  a
                  flock
                  of
                                                                                                  
                          fanged
                          ammunition.

I would not name him.

Could not cut
the throbbing umbilical

nor listen to him

suckle small calf
then coo a reckoning

contusions like clusters of stars.

~

Late Summer,
after fire ravaged sky

& left behind
sunbirds

in swimming pools, I
found my son

in oaken soot
rebuked him

for finding it funny.
He started to spit

started to gag
spilled from lips

a sequined stone
black as a blown grenade.

But sometimes he sings.
Sometimes

he runs the fragrant fog

searching
for Spanish moss

& comes home
smelling of honey.

Sometimes
he holds his ear to my heart

& asks me to whistle
asks me to weep…

says he hears the swelling
crack

of a hundred shattered men.