Ooey, gooey, pustulating, cheese,
lip stain mixed with grease,
extra pepperoni that weighs
on the face of the pie.
Dot, dot, dot, you count each one,
and burnt crimson strikes on the
skin, thin crust line. Malleable pieces
stretched and picked and devoured.
Yummy taste molds to rot,
and nothing beautiful remains.

Ahh, the wind, this day, glorious-glorious…
There are her gloves, pink-spotted, green-trimmed.
and lift…
A kitten in the sun, she wears heels to
the garden.
and tap…
A pack of marigolds waiting to
root into rows made by
anxious knuckles.
and lift…
There is her basket, woven, as she pretends, by
backyard gnomes during late-night play.
and tap…
a spade, a trowel, and muddy knees
Tap, tap, tap…
She is a painted lady, hidden carefully
behind heavy lashes and a headscarf of
pale blue polyester chiffon.
now, dig…and dig…and dig…
Polite doesn’t cut it when the bodies
are dying to be covered.
deeper, faster, deeper, faster…pause…
Oh, not the shadows, not again.
Are they coming, the circus animals, are
they coming out to play?
her gloves…she adjusts.
and stretch and flex, stretch and flex…
the marigolds…tap, tap, tap…
she stands up and her skirt…
Her skirt is a veil meant to
cover broken flowers, but soon,
the rain will come down anyway.
under the tree…under the tree,
she waits, she listens, she frowns at
the ugliness of dirt caked
fingernails, ankles, and brow…
It is as if she, a lady, wears the
evidence of wallowing instead of
a perching selectively
on this glorious, glorious day.

They gather in masses
for the festival of the year.
Then spend hours watching it
through a six inch screen.

I clear my notifications.
Ignore another story.
Delete whoever sent it directly.

If I wanted to attend,
I would have bought a ticket.

Kentucky summer sighs now,
stretches out her suntanned legs,
presses her soft belly in
on our beading skin. Foreheads

damp with the same dew sprinkled 
upon the blushed and bulging 
tomatoes. We pluck them as
her tears start to crash. Leaking

gutters create fine curtains
of rain water. Tin roofs play
her lulling song. Her breath sweet, 
she exhales through the screen door,  

a perfume of petrichor.
The clay beneath her skin molds
the hills and valleys of home.
Blood of the stone, she unfolds. 

Lean back on the dark cool bluegrass
Rest your head on the firm curve of the smooth basketball
Sip your Ale-8 even if you were not weaned on its tang
Pause at the top of each hill to catch your breath and the breeze and your location
Scoop up that peppery gravy with the last bite of biscuit swirled around the plate
Feel the beat of the drums reflected off the hills in the primal call of the tailgate
Savor the comforting weight of a hot brown in your belly
Hear the twang of a dulcimer built by a hillwoman and handed down through her people
Pack your holidays with the rich flavors of Ruth Hunt
Run your horses for the sheer joy of the sun and the wind
Place the dark cool bluegrass on your tongue to taste the bitter and the sweet

The chair said “don’t.” He did it anyway. In my memory
I can still see the bright orange disc, the sudden fixation
of the room on the one mouth disobeying. The charge
ran the length of the floor. I mistook the play
of tongue for a message meant for me. Not innocence,
that sweet wrong read, just somewhere to build symbolism.

This is what I left out of the first stanza’s memory:
I took two photos. That is not an act of symbolism,
it is an act of wanting. There was no innocence
in the hours I waited to send them — the fixer fixing the fixation,
making permanent what might have stayed in play,
his beautiful bored mouth arrested and held under charge.

“Like a poetry slam at Willy Wonka’s speakeasy.” The charge
of a line that flirts and ducks at once — pure symbolism,
deniable, warm, a door gently closed. I knew it for play
and a dodge but answered truthfully, with the truth of my fixation.
Into that I read no innocence
and got none back. So I tried, from memory,

a different door — a question, safe, a thing from memory
we both loved, the Bergman film. He’d sent its charge
at full volume into the room, to someone maybe reading this. Innocence
himself, performing the movie about the silence of God as play
while I stood near and unaddressed. I call the text fixation,
but it could have been a follow-up between future friends, or symbolism —

still, it was the third ask, smaller than the second, and all my symbolism
could not make him answer it. He let it die. I had, by my own memory,
descended: evidence, confession, pretext. There was no innocence
in any rung. The seal stayed shut. He kept the warm sealed charge
and meant nothing he couldn’t take back. The sugared play-
thing at his lips was after all probably just nerves, a lingering oral fixation.

He sucked the sucker. He looked at me. Sucks to be me circling this erotic fixation.
I set myself up for this stupid silence. I build increasingly arcane symbolism
to make the wanting bearable, to make it play
as theology. I keep writing higher poems to climb above the memory
of how small the real thing was. What if there is no above, only grounded charge,
the rain still falling on the love I keep insisting kept its innocence?

Envoi

Poetry and memory, fixation and innocence, silence and symbolism
amount to the same thing. He’s not here. So I play
again with the shut seal, the unshared oxygen, the charge.

outliving the rest of them is most likely never easy
one way or another they drop off over the years
some losses are far easier to take than others
it is outrageous to say so but it’s the truth
mother early father late brother lately
sisters older and frail but still here
one thing about keeping count
like this is you drift into the
error that as keeper of
this kind of list you
can forget
you and
others
who
are
not
of the
blood
add
to
it
too

I meant to write more this week,
but I couldn’t bring myself to
pick up the pen and
channel dripping ink
across blank pages.

Instead, I became weightless,
cocooned inside a hammock deep 
in Wisconson woods, and let
God read me Their poetry through
a bullfrogs mouth.

soft-shelled extrovert with a heart of song
your deep sea dramatics don’t make me love you any less
we are the ocean’s favourite fools
walking fin in claw through tides high and low