Poetry

I was welcomed home by the me
I’d always tried to be—
more rainbow than thunderclap,
no more worry-do-worry-do.

Surely I betrayed her at least three times:
eighteen months of bone-grinding hip pain,

a list of life stories never recorded, and
leaving her exposed to suffering because

I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was so hard to die.
The cock’s crow was just basic kidney physiology,

Dome of the rock
dome of the belly

every diaphragm
its own firmament

waters above
from waters below

eyeglasses flecked with salt spots
remnants of our oceans

When I decapitated the sunflowers today, the birds had already
pecked them mostly bald. I sawed through those thick necks with
silver shears, squash leaning to cup falling petals and black seeds in her
green palms. I was cutthroat, ripping this food from the garden. I knew
how fierce and warlike the small wrens had become, and, sure enough,
there were the fearless nails in my scalp, clawing for my soul.

This spring, we’ll gather for a third time
since we first lost our forebears, martyrs to a cause

they did not choose for themselves.
Beloved grandmothers spent their last nights alone

in crowded hospital rooms while officeholders
deliberated over the what, not the what now or the how.

This morning it is minus six degrees.
The old woman at the corner with her bundles
says yes to a ride, but is, at first, unwilling
to say where. Then she does say and tells me
as a girl her grandmother kept three hundred chickens
which she tended every morning before school.

She says a Chinese man would come to separate
the roosters from the hens. Apparently they look alike.
In storybooks there’s no mistaking, but it seems
in real life, one must be outed by his crow.