Sunday, August 31, 2014

Dog Day (for my mother, who no longer reads…and perhaps never did...)

Morning is static in the untuned radio of your day...
It is reunion time, the 40th anniversary
And you cannot find the station
Months seem out of sequence
You prefer your calendar pages white
A bird outside
Could be just some form of tinnitus

A woman’s mother will not let go until
She has her own child
The blessing is a wound
You may fear that you will not love this baby
And it is with relief that you begin to worry

We seek the missing where there is none
Cut what once was whole
Juvenate before we rejuvenate
As birth is the beginning of loss...
The child is a bandage
A stranger
The first thing my mother could not claim

Memory is shorter these days
Does not contain words like dreaming
Loose and innocence
Surely you will discard mornings, collect sunsets
Thinking it must be Always Safe to Shoot
At Things with Holes
Helping the voices to a kiss
Let the wrong one in, they say
Some days you Forget how to walk up stairs...
Some days you remember this is good
With 3 m’s

Forget the last exam
Discarded postcards
Stamps look unfamiliar
And cheap denominations are
Without meaning
Your belief needs bifocals
Just to see the windshield crack
After all, it could be your eyes
Your glasses…
You must check to feel which you are wearing
After all
A whole day can go by without speaking
Perhaps no one would listen

You slip into a room where someone reads a poem
The author used to stare
Pursue you to the door
Procure your number...
If you had a dog you might forget to walk it
Some days these things worry you
Some days you worry that they do not
Next week it might be Christmas
Holidays pile up like ex-boyfriends
Faces of men you might have slept with, might have looked at
From a desk on Parent-teacher night

The dirt is now forgivable...
Dust reassures that weeks still pass
Windows are troubling, or perhaps mirrors
The softness of your breasts surprises; no one has touched you this week and you are not one to touch yourself
Bloody but you cannot say stained
When did you cease being shocked by the grinds and  spatters of last night’s fiasco
in the afternoon light
The mail tells you
een summoned to You have been summoned to testify for solitude
Opening the envelope brings
The vague ghost of someone’s spit
Adds  to the suspicion that someone has vomited
And hidden in your downstairs
Which has spread to the bedroom

Perhaps you’ll borrow a dog to sniff out the source
But you are afraid he will dislike youtude:
Or worse, obey the unpretty version you’ve become
Despising your fear
Ignore the stench...
Not just overnight
You have become a sort of weed
Poverty seeps in like damp
You cannot wash it out
It has changed me, you apologize
To the dog who has not come
No matter how many times you whistled his name
Barked his pride and prayed for rain


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2 Comments:

Blogger Ludovica said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

September 2, 2014 at 5:35 AM  
Blogger Billy said...

Really good!

September 10, 2014 at 6:38 AM  

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