You spread blood, spit, and sticks
across my open room.
I spent weeks pushing out the knots,
you left like metal from under skin.

Now that you’re gone,
I try taking the steps backwards
my calves cry out again,
I want to turn back but can’t.

And I have to watch the crows
creep through our windows,
kiss and croak, cry and fight over
old eggs inside our bed.

We built out of stone.
It’s so much easier to hold something
when you never move it at all.

Cross, pool to lawn, woods to field, snow falls,
lines up with the grass, ground–
burst, dried out.

Lie down, eyes are spiderwebs, snow catchers.
Sit up, eyes are film projectors, time–
blinks of light.

Sign on a telephone pole says Lost Peacock.

Imagine, someone finds that sapphire half-buried in snow,
eye-spots, blue, green, and red, unmistakable turkey tracks
stealing off into the trees.

Broke a few keys in the process
of typing out her autobiography.
It sounded better than mine–
Hers had kids, mine didn’t.

She said a poem is like a quilt–
you can cut it up and start over with the old pieces.
But I laid out words in lines
and that’s the way she treats everything anyway.

Then empty boxes–
trucks jut from one-eyed warehouses,
windows broken or shaded in dirt
making stained glass
the way rubble makes a mosaic.

The meadowlands are still
grass and winding rivers shrunken.
Boots sink, knees, toes–
the familiar fear of mud.

Imagine, quicksand or something like it
so close to New York–
a city of always wet cement,
names and fingerprints
lined-up stones
leaving slow ripples, solid bubbles,
the choke-in-throat of words forgotten
as they melt into cement.

Trees thrust up through

this hole that was broken into
womanhood like a board

stiff ground and grass seams

snapped in half. Nothing gushes out
not even blood or the grabbing hands

birthing limbs.

of a brother, baby
son, just wood crackling,

Not shocking. Wordless

wind.

breath of becoming and un.”

Fingers always seeking tips
curve out from the palm
as if endlessly plucking
an invisible blossom.
Elbows hook
and grass imprint sighs
like a shadow unlocked from feet
dying back to green.

She reminds me of a dream
in which Carl Jung described me
as a classic Bedivere–
perfectly-sinewed except for a hand missing,
knowing that with it I could swim
to the bottom of the lake
embrace the lady and give her a sword
old age couldn’t break.

You laugh at this
and I want to say,
Not everything has to be shocking
to be worth words!
Yet these fluttering chapbook
pages shriek,
Look at me, look at
this hole that was broken
into womanhood like a board
snapped in half. Nothing gushes forth,
not even blood or the clawing hands
of a brother, baby
son, just air, wood, the crackling
breath of becoming and un.

I stare at you,
then back at the bathroom tile.
Like looking at the sun,
patterns never appear.

I trick myself into intoxication.
Making
indelible inkdots on my brain?

Outsmoke me tonight
I will be the winner of drinks!
Wasting ink on waking up
and falling asleep.

God give me,
whip or will,
flawedience that I am,
bricks to outlive this winter
dry-spell you cast on me.

Match made,
check box,
game set.

The Fat Lady sings to me
and I kiss her lips
say, for once in my life
let me do this
ending thing.