Sitting in Father’s car, Mother’s ears burning
from his stuttering regret, I split
a smooth, dark plum with my teeth. He says, “I loved
her, and admire her,” as the sun lies
down for the night, “But there’s a cumulative damage
that is long past the point of healing.

He says, “I fucked up. I fucked up bad, and I need to heal
alone,” and then the sunset cast him in burnt
sienna like an old totem, weatherworn and damaged
but not giving up to the sand, just split
at the tongue for adultery and lies,
and stung every night with spirits for lack of love.

If guilt is sand he is a stone plateau in love
with the wind for never letting him heal.
But he’d watched the sky—for so long lying
above him—rain down for him to quench the burn,
and he drank once or twice from her split
mist, and learned thirst causes endless damage.

She washed a bit of the thyroid damage
from his cheeks with more friendship than love
but still it seared and split
us four, but like deadheading marigolds, healing
begins after separation from the root. She burned,
Mother did, like hot sand. She hit him. Beat him red. “LIAR!”

Screamed, “LIAR!”
and pounded her fist against his sandstone faces damaging
the structure but not the shape, the slow burn
fuse finally hitting the dynamite. I love
the feel of eating a plum, tongue on the heel
of it, biting half at a time as it tightens slightly before splitting…

Who split
you, Father? Whose milky teeth pulled your skin taught, dripping lies
down her olive chin, pulling pulp from your palms and heels?
And I have to wonder what did more damage,
these juicy wounds or Mother watching them rot and calling it love,
stoking the fire in your pit just to watch it burn.

Finally, I say to him, “You will heal. I know your heart is splitting
but soon the burning sand will cool enough to lie
on, and the damage done will not outweigh that love.”

9/04



Eat and Die

The gray dogs of old London dance flesh from my heels
like first frost churning at a jagged sidewalk.
The speckled tiles on the classroom floor begin to creak, locked
glue-heavy in fluorescent sheen.
A bulimic girl is sleeping in my bed
stinking of vomit and saliva and cigarettes,
trying to cleanse her sins with my dead skin.
I left her this morning, escaping my own room
with old jeans and a backpack
as she lay on her side still silent, concave and sharp, vertebrae like teeth
chomping out her guts, her sinewy knees exposed as she’s curled
trapping the balled up sheets between her small and neat breasts. I was cold
all night and she slept with her back to me, chewing at my lungs if I spooned her.
She only trusts her stomach to love and he ejaculates
acid into her throat like an alarm clock whispering
               eat and die
               eat and die
               eat and die
with his pink hands pressing her head down
when she heaves to engulf him.

A whiskey-breathed mechanic asked me for a few bucks last night,
stopped me with a greasy hand on my chest. He said he was
chained to the city, a little drunk and trying to get home to the girlfriend
he’d beaten screaming into stranding him here. Jus’ some change or somethin’ for a bus ticket.
He swayed on his feet, shuffling four/four time sour/mash/destruction,
oh have mercy, please thank you yes dear lord yes
and apologized for bothering me and for slurring. Fucking scavenger but
I know a communist who would have given him his whole wallet.

These tiles under my desk are faded with the scratches of steel chairs locked
in the same spot third row third seat from the window chewing on my legs
licked dry whitebones click clicking as I’m dragged over moonlit cobblestones through the
bleaching fog I sit at this hard desk absorbing the math, the accents, the stale
breath of all the other engineers, fucked for a job in a couple years.
We all know it
but it’s never spoken.

We’re all silent, swallowing the chalk
                             dust like                              cheap wine before noon
                  drugged.

My stomach is rotting

              aching for a taste of salt and protein, smelling of vomit kisses.
I guess she’s gone now. She told me to set an alarm for 11:00 and now it’s almost noon.
I left her a bagel in case she was hungry.
Two rows down and yawning one of us engineers unwraps a peppermint candy,
trying to stay awake and fight the drugs with sugar high and
pancreas excrement.

I touched her ribs just before dawn. She woke up and whispered to the wall
               eat and die
               eat and die
               eat and die
beautiful like rabies as the dogs returned for me.

I click click over bricks this time in the sun that’s not warm enough
but too warm for October thinking of maybe taking up smoking
so I’m not always touching her breasts with empty hands.