Down at The Salvation Army Thrift Store on HalfOff Wednesday

There will appear, as a swatch of babiest blue from a summer sky; a sweater,
nubbly material that looks to me like great grandmothers bathrobe all blue and clover smelling
hanging on the back of the bathroom door.
I dont like blue.

I dont like memories either,
they sneak up when you least expect it and strangle you during odd moments, cause a choking in the throat and a stinging around the eyes and pain- chest spasms and heart-ache.
The best parts go away and dont come back.

I am not an obligation.I do not require a gift at all,
particularly one that is too small and a color I loathe
which you would know if you werent too busy to stop at look at me and really see me for once,
this flesh and blood formed root and stock and branch- exactly like yours except

bent to another shape, another love, a different life- an orphan in the middle of the tribe .

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

So little as to be overlooked.
Butter wouldn’t melt in that sweet little rosebud mouth
with that pink kitten’s tongue,
a dirty unapproved-by-mother thought
never crossed that mind, no filth ever touched that perfect skin
or so you say.

I could tell you stories of the night
she was nearly sold as a callgirl to a pimp,
who argued price in front of her
like she had no ears or mouth to speak a denial,
like she was only face and tits and cunt,
just a thing to be passed back and forth.

I could tell you about the shotgun
and the busted chinging sound
that shattered glass makes in the overpowering
silence that follows a 30-30 going off in your ear
and describe the green of the getaway truck
as the green that is almost black :
how the only color in the night
was the whiteness of that perfect skin-
someone with more poetry than sense
called her Narcissus, once, for being white,like paper.

But the story she likes least is about the night
she killed the man and how we found her,
drenched and mindless and wild. We couldn’t touch her,
not even to help because she threatened to kill us all,
and the knife was so very large and she was so vicious-
like an ermine starving in an early winter.

Her husband found out, eventually,
because in the night the obscenities
ring like shot gun blasts;
and the subconscious flows like the blood
she never remembers spilling,
whether hers or someone else’s ,
and the underworld is peopled with old crime
and deadly sins, and he has to wonder
about the lion/lamb that he lies with.

Scraps

on the corner of a section of the newspaper :

crawling into bed with you was the smallest sin I ever committed

pinned to the refridgerator next to a child’s art project :

start diet today

hidden behind the door :

a packed suitcase, a train ticket in a jacket pocket

in the mirror :

haggard worry lines and trembling lips

Honey

This is for my redheaded brother who is not

red
or my brother, though we do share the skin
that flays and burns and writhes
through jungles and nightmares,
rivers of ink and bars of striped
lines- we ride the tiger, he and I
through the round of seasons
’til we fall off the carousel
at the cardinal points
and solstices.

Grinders

She sighs at the window.

When Friday came, as it does, tearing into the heart
and hinting freedom- sighing free as a whisper across
the skin he doesn’t admit he likes to touch,
and he sent his regrets and the music
went flat-
some of the joy left the evening and the songs saddened themselves
and it wasn’t until Tuesday;
safe back at work in the tall tight security of elsewhere,
up the long stairwell with no windows,
that she admitted to the worry
and the relief, and ambivalently watched it rain,
watched a submarine breach like the largest prehistoric
mega whale and gnawed

on something tasteless for lunch.

In the Middle of the Between

This is not love:

this winding of tiny green shoots
through old branches, brittle, fragile.
It is growth.

Sand through a sieve,
images through a dream.
Silence between songs,
Love is absence as much as presence.

You are love,
big eyed, fiercely crying out.

Love is a cloak around me
a presence inside me
a fire to warm me
a mirror to see me

a key, that frees me.