A Song of Sickness and Healing

There was no cry of hawking girl. Ephesus says: even marble
turns to chalk. I would show you the invisible tokens of sorrow

and joy—grief-scars and love-scars. Show me how ruin makes
a home out of hip bones. They will touch the bark and feel each

age of the tree fly undisturbed into them. Happy prints of an invisible
time are illumined. I wanted a scar just like my father’s, bold

and appalling, a mushroom explosion, that said I too was at war.
As though life were more convincing resonating like a blade.

Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?: what the sun burns up
of it, the moon puts back. Wind in the cottonwoods wakes me to a day

so thin its breastbone shows, so paid out it shakes me free of its blue dust.
I never knew I was also a lamp — until the light fell out of me,

dripped down my thigh, flew up in me, caught in my throat like a canary.
It goes without saying, it stays without saying wind, spirits, tumbleweeds, pain.

Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Any message would do,
you say, tiny jeweled tears permanently etched in the corners of your eyes.

Source & Method

Awkward Goodbyes

Summer had been so hot the things we touched burned our hands.
The sky wasn’t black or blue but the dying green of night.
Stars had closed their eyes or sheathed their knives.

I used to think pain was meaningful. I no longer
think pain is meaningful.

The flawed moon acts on the truth, and makes
an autumn of tentative silences.
Sort of a solution to awkward goodbyes.

I held a penny on my
tongue. The taste shocked me,
its brown-gold sweet. I suppose
there are grips from which
even angels cannot fly.

Did you think I would not change?

Source & Method