Everyone’s just so frail it seems, yes—
even their dreams, gobbed up from but
sticky potential, are prone to these
quivering, puce-pitted bruises. What 
 
should theses bruises bloom in if 
one just jabs the cat’s-eyed thumb 
too deep? Perchance, some yowling 
swansong stretching up rain-wracked 
rocks and escarpments, Chippendale
furnishings cramped in the blood-
colored glove compartment of
what was a mustang maybe, or
maybe no more than mere tears
that if smeared in just such a way
against scar-staved vellum might
stipple Guernica in wind-scrapped 
scree or the Flight of the Bumblebee 
boldly transposed in a painting that 
only your theralyst sees—
 
What broods among muttering bruises
batten the world beneath skulls and spluttering
breastbones—
 
Were these the greater cicadas that
all of us, other than Joy Mangano, must
wrestle with—writhing to get that
                         very last
                         breath in, writhing
                         to bring what grass-
                         scratched boy back, pressed
                         to a taffy-pulled gait
                         through a grate in but
                         heaven’s listing, concrete
                         gates caught clotted with
       how many penny-thin, coin-flipped
       appraisals of fate
       no more than a
       drooling junkyard doberman
                      hoping to share in the
                      pain of having your
                      ears docked, cropped, or
                      boxed into velveteen cuspids
                      or really, more rather than that,
   this rambling, mule-kicked twitch he gives
   that blossoms all dahlia-soft from a burbling 
   belly-
   scratch—