Boy now, man later; and all the story in between:

Yes breaking down to No, joy to pain.

Milk now, meat later; separation, fuse.

Swim the river rising and with patience take your aim.

Miss once, miss again; and your whole life seems a waste.

The target is yourself becoming brave.

Who soon, who later? – whatever happens next –

Someday you’ll lose us in the in-between.

What’s that behind my back?

What’s that gnawing behind my back?

It sounds like a dog crunching bones for marrow.

Bones here so old, the sun’s dried up the marrow.

What kind of dog splinters bone like that?

Don’t turn around, I hear it getting louder.

Don’t turn, don’t turn, its growl is getting louder.

Oh, don’t you growl at me, nappy rabid dog.

He can’t remember what they bought,

two corner mausoleum plots or two

in the center, but he doesn’t trust

those bastards, they’ll take

your money and who knows what,

he wants to go back, watch

the deposit, make sure he gets what he paid for –

he wants the right spot, the one they picked out

together, not in the corner, in the center,

because they planned it all, and with his heart

he was going to die first,

and she’d remember where to put him.

There’s a kind of sky below the ocean –

a field of starfish, turning slowly

like cogs inside

a water-watch, wound by a sea river;

the star’s five fingers tremble and

reach for a clam’s book of meat,

into which it will inject a sedative

and then its stomach.

In The City, escaped parrots colonize

a hilltop and breed, cackling You want that

In a bag? More hits after this…

Recovery, an itch itched in every poem.

The notebook is now wholly in my head –

it was under the seat when my car was hit,

burned, blew. Unharmed and angry, I hustled home

and to the hospital to tell Dad before

he saw it on TV. His heart had been bad,

and they said that shock… “Poppa Doc” lay there,

old, cored-out, fat, and draped his feelings in odd

disaster-jokes: “your juvenilia burned –

so what? Look at me – prostrate, no prostate.”

And no story of mine could hurt him, not Dad.

Vines of blood and sugar swayed from his arms.

We watched the news. On he one-legged nighttable

I put the charred black coin of the gas cap.

I leapt up in my sleep

again they come

forms of cadavers

my father has entered

crackling the papers

crumpled by the bed

Each held what killed it

for me to inscribe

I learned the final causes

tumor clots a child a knife

I fell down sleeping

What I do and cannot do is one gesture

At dawn I tasted print

smeared across the pages.

Leaning over me, she took my head into her hands,

the short hair thick still, full beneath her fingers.

She told me she had read that pressure (from

a rubber band about the head) combined with

lowered temperatures (from ice) would sometimes

keep the drugs from killing hair roots in the scalp.

I suffered numbness, ache from cold, for her,

for hope. She only had to try it once.

So what is it, then, this being human,

except just being, here on the porch,

in the last square of sunlight,

dulled from some—

as it will seem much sooner than you think—

bearable blow.

You still can feel this last heat.

the softened and flowery breeze.

You can still hear the bird’s static:

lovers pairing up all over town.

Could it have been the body’s fault?

--its need to grow betraying me

as when my uterus contracted

faster and with increasing force

at what could not be driven out?

--or when the allergy to Compazine

that made my jaw go sideways hard

until it almost broke?—when the doctor

(on-call, coming just in time)

shot Valium in my open vein?

Sixty miles per hour, blood.

Where might that river take mw now, that flood?

Aneita Jean never liked the men at the Klan rallies. It scared her not to see their faces. It made her uncomfortable that they all seemed to know her daddy, and that he knew them by their raspy voices. She would watch them circling around on the hill, their crosses aflame, and snuggle closer to her father’s chest.

“I want to leave, daddy,” she’d say softly, fearful they might overhear and come running back, robes flapping behind like hateful phantoms.

“Hush up, Jeannie.”

She awoke to the sound of the door creaking open. She could tell from the backlit outline that it was not the baby’s mother who was coming in, but a boy. She said nothing, pressed her eyes shut, and pretended she was still asleep. When the boy climbed on top of her, she knew who it was. Silently, she slid the baby to the far corner of the blanket, until only her fingertips were touching the baby’s chubby thigh. Then she lay absolutely still while George Kelly ran his shaky hands over her belly and under her dress.

When you work at the pottery or the mill or the mine, you come to understand certain truths. Hands are lopped off. Bones are broken. Machines grind men up. Mines collapse. Lungs clog. Men drink. Women gossip. You are born knowing that most people get lost, that their stories die with them. You expect little else. And so you talk a lot about nothing and you get shit-faced and you welcome violence if for no other reason than because you can ignite it.

Outside, my grandfather wheeling

a pesticide tank

from tree to tree, spraying everything

with thick, white foam –

bark, leaf, apple flesh –

salting the garden

with handfuls of red sand, dissolving

aphid, Japanese beetle, horned tomato worm

as thick as rope. Gone

in an instant, emerging

from his fiberglass outbuilding shed, helving

an axe, bright blade, pine handle,

to eliminate

a dwarf peach weakened by nesting beetles.

O ordinary axe

I came quietly where

my grandmother

was an insect

in an iron hive.

No drop

of water fell

more quietly than I

fell through

the elevator shaft.

The Lord so loved the world

he sent

a steaming pile of

lasagna for

my ninth birthday.

A plate. Another. One

cascading square

waits on

a spatula; our priest

arrives. My mother greets him.

His peck

on my forehead

is full, unwelcome.

He squires me

from relative

to relative

collecting gifts:

sweater, eight-track, monster mask.