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where there should be eyes
only absent gulleys
where salt water runs
like milk and honey
hallowed ground
where chest cavern
lies bare
there was never
a burial
for this grief carried
no lilies arranged
wake, summoned
dirge sung
or throaty wails
the haint walks
still
amongst the dead
that forgot to stay
alive
Everybody dies.
You learn how much you miss them.
(Also in the game.)
for sale, rocking chairs
bought new
need work
wood still good
replaced
been stored in garage
The AC breaks. I am dead weight. Destabilizing.
Take my blood pressure. 79/65. It’s not shocking.
I press my face into cool leather couch cushions.
My skin smells like the lotion that will not sink in.
Cry on the hardwood kitchen floor, the water
boils on the stove above me, waiting, waiting.
I don’t need to move. I don’t need to think. Breathe
the airlessness. Suck out stale drags of oxygen.
It looks like I’ve waded in shit, but it’s just mud
from the poppy field last week I swear. It’ll wash.
Blood draw tomorrow. We’ll see if I pull off the trick.
Pre-game electrolytes, healthy fats, prayers, threats.
Chain chew a pack of Orbit sweet mint. Stress
like there’s a gun to my head. I’d almost rather.
81 degrees Fahrenheit in the pitch dark living room.
I too am familiar with this number. I am happier cold.
My grandson and I put in a day’s work
in the large yard around the farmhouse,
we trim around the base of the trees,
weed the gooseberry bushes in the garden,
chop out poison hemlock
on the road bank in front of the shop.
Today is the start of summer vacation
and he chose this over the swimming pool,
his dad told him to put in an honest day’s work
and I see how his twelve year old body
runs so much more efficiently
than my seventy-six year old one.
Soaked in sweat
we sit in the shade of a hackberry tree
and slowly sip our ice water,
he’s talking about the seventh generation
principle of native american tribes
then takes my picture with his phone.
I’m rough looking,
flushed, with my hair in wild disarray,
he asks if it’s ok to save the image,
he wants to store it in his archive.
I tell him that if he keeps me in his heart
fifty years from now
I will still be alive in his memory.
I’ll only be sixty-two then he says,
I can keep you alive longer than that
.
Everyone is mowing the lawn always
The first time this grass was cut
was with a long dull blade
I think about how now, every morning
there are one hundred pink worms
writhing for salvation on the pavement
This place used to be tall, up to my face
inavigable, harsh, unbound
green and mulberry and brown
sparkling with pollen
quiet.
In some ways I am a cat. On guard for the mouse. Protecting my food, my flock, my solitude found in liquor. Always on guard, peering over the shoulder, pour and drink and repeat in isolation quickly racing against being caught. Like a cat shielding their food bowl or their tummy when rolled over, alert to prevent the touch and if touched they lunge. They need a rest, a nap, purr peaceably when fast asleep or eating- nourishment for the soul. Absinthe, beer, and bourbon, nourishment for the soul. On and on and on. Three meals a day, all the food groups, the holy trinity, salvation, or justification, or will to live.
Fill a food bowl for a large cat and they cannot contain themselves, all so satisfied unable to digest hordes of nutritional lust. Gorging themselves and purr endlessly.
Pour an absinthe before eating, then a bourbon, chase with a beer, and repeat it all over again. A spark to jump or kickstart the day, jumper cables in a dead Buick of antiquity revealing now in the warm sun and empty road cruising merrily now that things have been restored.
