I
Maybe it exploded,
II
on this world and i took
in for the first time the
desert that my soul had
become and i felt the
glass shards lacerating
my calves and arms and i
heard the steady beat of
drums approaching fast and
i saw god's shadow on
this world and i heard the
crackle of bones in the
pyre and i could not see
the moon when i looked up
and i felt a rumble
under my feet and i
saw god's shadow on this
world and i heard stone break
under the weight of the
sun and i watched the dust
of who you were fall through
my broken fingers and
i fell to my knees in
the face of the great wind
and i saw god's shadow
on this world and i heard
the weeping and wailing
of bodies driven by
whips and blades and
i watched men fall to the
ground with their throats slit and
dissolve into the earth
and i felt the sharp stones
digging into the soles
of my feet and i saw
III
still emerging from your shell and
letting your first warbled notes out
to hover on the morning air,
living among the roots and stones
at the edge of town, already
not innocent but not guilty
either, unaware of the great
thundercloud fast approaching on
the horizon, not seeing how
fast the sand was running out, a
IV
not know how to be strong, because I did not know why I needed to be strong, because I only knew that I had somehow failed, because I always knew that I had somehow failed, because I felt something go from me when the news reached my eyes, because I did not know how a stranger could deprive me so, because I did not think it was right for me to make that grief my own, because I thought that I had to do it for you all the same, because I could not do it, because I could not bear what I
V
, after all?
VI
hands; it screams up at
you from the earth; it
follows you like a
stranger in the dark;
it drips from your new
faucet no matter
how much you yank on
the handle or how
many times you call
the repairman; it
tinges the taste of
every chunk of bread
you rip from the loaf;
it turns the ground to
mud beneath your feet;
VII
the same suit you are wearing in the only
photo of you i have ever seen, leaving
shoeprints in the soil that has become so soft
and wet after the long rain, moving but not
toward anything in particular, for
its own sake, water pooling in the chasms your
feet leave behind somehow as clear as great lake
VIII
decayed face looking at sun
vultures overhead
IX
so little, but even still, I have never been able to look at you the same way since. Yours was the world of teeth, and it still is, for none could make you stand trial for what you had done, and there was only the wailing to God in an empty room. I hoped that the few voices I could hear would grow into a chorus, a geyser erupting from the same earth that covered his blood, a wave too great to stop with any wall that would
X
the shadow that you throw on the soft ground:
XI
right somehow, that i would find
a way to fashion all my
little words into some sort
of spiral staircase to take
us all far away from here,
or perhaps just a place for
your ghost to sleep in on those
XII
a box In a box In a box In a box In a box In a box In a box In a box In a box In a box In a box In
XIII
a patient cut open on a table,
all the old words said so carelessly back
then hovering around my frozen stiff
body like wasps that i dread to crush, all the
old songs of grief echoing in my ears
somehow over the ringing and buzzing,
all the old ghosts lingering among the
trees outside my window still after these
long years have crashed over and through me and
receded back into the deep, all the
old anger and despair coursing through my
body still though i knew you only as
another point on a spider's web whose
vibrations i sometimes felt when it was
XIV
and when they
got to that
room at last
too late and
saw you there
were you gone
in truth or
did you float
high where they
did not think
to look for
you and watch
them do their
work on what
XV
My fingers still