3 Poems

I undress now as your widow,

my thoughts sometimes lingering on all the times

I undressed as your wife—

your hand gliding down the pleats of my spine

guiding down the teeth of my zipper 

to expose the slick of my slip.

I wonder how many others had you this way,

how many freckled backs met your gaze. 

A woman’s back is full of secrets—

a sea creature pulsing in shadow.

Men don’t have secrets. Or, at least, you never did.

Men of your calibre don’t need them. 

Though perhaps as a courtesy for me, dear, 

you could have labored. 

I tried to leave you about a dozen times, you know.

How foolish, I thought, even then—

though I’d hardly call myself a martyr 

for what you’d call my “little knickknacks.”

I’ve always had a head for furnishings.

You had such a beautiful head, dear. 

And to think some silly little Communist—

the strawberry Chanel your favorite number—

splashed with blood, caked with hair and 

accented with the most delicate parts of your skull. 

So many pieces...I tried to keep it all in.

In that moment, I wasn’t sure who I was to you.

I thought if I could just keep you all together…

But I knew you were dead.

Dusk has become my favorite hour,

time soft like a rabbit’s ear, daylight wincing

through my fingers like so many calloused dreams,

the tan lines from my wedding ring once

defiant, now long faded. 

I was what you needed when the pies dried up,

when you had your fill, popped the cherry of History

and left her doubled over, puking from the quaaludes.

Our marriage was an instrument of Time—

Daddy groomed me for my pick of sadists.

There were times I thought no atlas could reach you.

Loving you...certainly the worst way to get to you. 

Didn’t think I knew about the duckies?

Such a curse for a girl to be bright…

I suppose it was too much to ask we grow old 

together, to see our children grow up together. 

I once thought, cradling your head like I had so many

times before, so many times in the dark night

after our lovemaking, fierce and frenzied and desperate,

 that no one had you like I had you. You were too

much for this world, like our children doomed,

growing and fading in my crooked womb. 

Where were you?  And where was God? 

Oh if we should ever meet—

I’d gladly shake his hand before I cut the damned 

thing off! How many backs, Jack? How many Sirens 

called your name? Before anything else, I am a woman…

How many biddies held your full attention like 

I held the pieces of your precious head in 

those final moments? I give myself permission to no 

longer wonder anymore. I was past wondering 

on that plane, your brain matter sparkling on the

bouclé wool like the ripest pearls.

Sometimes when I’m lonely 

I dream up your childhood, meditate

on what it feels like to be you then,

walk the thresholds of your house.

Your siblings on each other’s heels.

The snowball fights in Connecticut.

The silence between your parents

that filled up the breakfast table. 

It makes sense. How you get sometimes. 

The first time you kissed a girl, 

felt her freckled thighs, maneuvered your

rough hands over her penny nipples,

hard working hands for a boy your age.

She was a few years older than you, but by

that time you’d seen fifty dead bodies,

at least, digging graves that summer.

Listened to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were 

Here” twice that much, contemplating 

heaven and all the hell you’d raised. 

The melted snow grieving from pelting

the faces of strangers soon to be buried.

Parentica melaneus:

honey blue and primal brown—

the color of mercy, bowels, 

and funeral home blazers

(of which I am too familiar.)

The sullen outlines aching 

purple like wings dipped in a bruise,

blackberry-blooded

with humble veins to map

its howling, savage heart.

Fearless against the sky, it winks

with an unflinching wild eye

like my father's—

delicate and virtuous—

weary in the face of death.

Sick collected in his body like

a secret in the open dark and 

groomed him for his coronation

as my daddy, King of Decay.

Once he showed me where

cancer had mapped him

in freckled heaving notches,

tumor for grapefruit-sized tumor—

gaunt like a starving moon.

They dug and dug and dug on him

with such misshapen symmetry,

and I said nothing. 

Through gleaming gritted teeth his 

smile hung on me;

I saw the devil—

a snarled noose with lucrative 

knots, spots before my eyes

like fireflies against the colors

of my eyelids, against the burnt 

orange-blue of its fluttering, and 

I could taste the ruin in my feet,

pink against the dark salt earth.

Mired with a sprinter's pulse,

I built my home in the church of the

trees. Knees buckling under

willful branches, I hardened there—

forged myself into a gilded 

chrysalis before the rotting world

in wait. I surrendered to the 

lonely sun and did not look back.