Panic
and Work
Buicks
and Chevys stand parked
in the Goodyear factory parking lot
though their restless atoms whiz;
the
bushes dont care, snagged
as they are on junk-- rotting insulation
like awkward bolts of flesh;
hobos
pace the fence
between the railway tracks and the trucks,
walking in the leaves mulch and their
elemental
smell --
inside
the factory, punchcards hold on a moment
in the teeth of the machine
in sexual noise, a joy;
but
flustered by mental nonsense
one machinist drove home at high speed
with the Maritime salt-marshes calling in gibberish,
wanting to veer into the snowbank on either side
of the road
and hide under his bed.
His
work ethic offered no comfort:
no
one inside the factory would accept
"Buicks parked at senseless angles"
for signs of team spirit;
nor
would the parking lot
contain his obvious struggle--
neatly parked in their defining spaces
Buicks and Chevys stand row on row.
Gutting
Trout
Roughly the flesh resists
then the head pops open
a silver-red rose forced to flower.
Im
glad you are dead.
Your deflated fins lay against my palm
like a hushed-up baby;
each of your speckles
once part of the black and yellow lake
flash like codes.
Killing
was like a game, but it wasnt.
The bolted handle of the knife
clubbed you dead. I used to watch his expert hands.
I learned to kill
by splitting myself in two--
one shrieking, as the blade
shrank into the skin,
the other standing back in a smirk--
Your
filmy lake-water back
slaps the sink,
my fathers knife seems to know you.
              --heres the white bucket for your innards
              the silver tap to flush you out.
"Intestine,"
my mother says. "Digestion. Waste."
I scratch your black intestine with my thumbnail
'til each vertebrae is articulate.
Then
I open you
without disgust, adult-like:
lost are all the organs that propelled you towards
me;
I relate to you perfectly. Your scoured inside
is my ideal self, gutted and clean
no
mess in my all-reflecting eyes.
Silence
Let
there be silence in the overmind,
exhaust the stigmas, the busy enigma
of being, as it's silenced
In
the closed handwriting of some mad women.
Others
may mark their way like dogs,
trickling piss from their excited hearts
over city shrubs and parking meters.
Q:
How does a life unfold?
A: Each day without a security guard.
Initial
life questions hit across the throat
and give birth to more questions.
(As
I write this, wasps crawl in and out of the light
socket
so above me is the sound of struggle.)
To
prevent more questions I've transferred my life
into photographs. I look like a medium-brown woman
(summer)
with drooping eyes. (She of all people looks like
she is posing.)
But
it isn't summer yet it is spring (I'm rushing)
lilacs on my desk perfume with a mauve flourish
like little groups of microphones
that would not be photographed.
The
trees in the photos of the trees
seemed farther away than when I saw them out the
window.
I miss them, turned back
to a living wild and without me.
Q:
why me?
A: no particular reason
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