MILKWEED LULLABY
The days were endless,
magical.
The violence, a golden thread
stitched through everything.
We played ponies.
I chose the most
delicate, the most
dangerous. And at night
ice cream and birthday
cake, a riot of
tiny white flowers.
Bright paper masks
to hide the mind behind.
At the edge of what
I can not ever
remember—
Plumbago, lantana, trumpet-
vine. A glorious magenta
Bougainvillea.
I don’t think she had a good friend,
Animals, maybe.
We never left the house
and were raised
in absolute and utter
isolation.
Animals.
People coming in the summer
to visit. And never
came back.
And in darkening weather
I cower inside the yellowing
field, listening—
I am crawling
the long corridor
back to the room
where the shattering
begins.
RADIO LULLABY
The spinning of a radio dial.
Memory set back to zero.
Dead flowers and penny candy
the bright colors of cruelty.
Of childhood: a pile of plush
animals. Sleeping ponies,
tarot cards, model horses.
Tiered yellow cakes, cream
soda, American cigarettes.
We want to see life
as it is experienced
within this soft machine.
The amber body, a mere
vehicle for shame.
Ruin, and the lace-like fabric
of sorrow. Melancholia.
The face changed forever.
Vertiginous, alien.
Fort-Da. Little Hans.
Compulsive repetition.
Lustgewinn. Playing
at the game of death.
The drive inside everything.
I am trying to get back
to the exact moment
where the dangerous
undoing begins.
An infant not held
turns. Feral, animal.
Memory, a spool
of vinyl tape
cut and singed.
They said, You will never
recover—
And the men
moving through the rooms
of my dreams—
