Typos
Word instead of wood but,
sodden, it smoked when it burned.
I wrote god for good who was, once––
in my childhood years, crowned
with the nimbus of that capital G––
but now tends to be a placeholder
for nightmare, tears.
Seeking solace in the pastoral, but
grove came out as grave and the lymph nodes,
irradiated, naked as nymphs, danced
in a circle brandishing shovels while
nightjars, in downed pine, chanted
yis-gadal v’yis kadash sh’may raboh,
that dreadful trill––and all I could do
was stand there, heart-stung, composing
sorrow inside my head.
Glossolalia of the keyboard, my fingers
say what I cannot, never meant to––I’m
marred by, married to this compulsive
language and cannot shut it (shout it) out,
even in this house of silence.
Live instead of love. Because that’s
what’s left for me without your yes – or
did I mean eyes?––to bless my brokenness.
Hello hell. These inked lines
sinking into white
cotton bond,
indelible.
The Burning Bush
I pretend not to listen, tell myself
I’m just out for the June of it,
an excursion, the effort of the climb.
I observe buds on the wild lavender,
ammonites in the fissured granite.
In my world, everything burns––
faces, skies, grand cities, the reservoir
of human memory––so how worked up
need I become over one nettled scrub
aflame. . .and fluent. . .and addressing me
by my father’s father’s name?
Said and Done
So angry I could spit.
Something old people said but they didn’t mean it.
I heard them on the front walk in a bubble of streetlight and I peeked
from my bedroom window.
My uncle, in a gray stripy suit, explaining, and flapping his hands
as he talked while
Momma folded her arms across her chest and stared daggers.
Only bits and pieces: “savings”, “insurance”, and then with a screech
I’d never heard gush from Momma’s throat––
“from your own brother’s widow!”
If this were a cartoon, he’d have shrunk inside his clothes and run away
buck-naked. But he didn’t run,
he reached out his hand. Something was in it. And right then I saw
my mother
spit on the ground where he stood. His black shoes shiny in the light.
