Burning Word

the first body of the season

a year since
the god of
starving dogs

the person i was
left behind like
so much
shed skin

the person i am
content to sit by
this second story
window
at twilight

willing to believe
the ovens will
never be fired up
again

and next door
a baby cries
or maybe a mother

and two days ago
the first body
of the season
was pulled from
the river and
named

a small moment
buried beneath
centuries of
brutality but it
stays with me

whatever can’t be
forgotten
worried to death
instead

unspoken

the hand is tiny
the mother history

softly
out where the pacific
comes up hard against
the bitter end of
the twentieth century

softly
where the front door
swings back and forth in
a hot breeze

and will you be
the one
to step forward and stop this
small tragedy before
its inevitable conclusion?

the answer
spoken or unspoken
is no
and you are not alone

the dogs will eat their fill
and the angels will sing
some serious fucking blues

beautiful young women will
sit at the open windows
of second story apartments
and cry

this is happening
even now

this has always been
happening

the fragile beauty of
innocence
refusing to be destroyed
with the thing itself

waiting for rust

back to this
again

cold and grey
and the eye of god
closed tight against the
raw sound of animals
dying terribly

you were hoping for
something better

a child of your own

a small white house
in a quiet town
but here we are on
beecher street where white
is not a color

is instead
a waiting for rust or
maybe just bleach spilled
across a favorite
shirt

a minor shade of despair
and even if the
sun shines it casts
only shadows

and even if
the windows break
we’ve forgotten how
to bleed

and there is never a
shortage of angry fists
trying to help us to
remember

anorexic

you dream of
being anorexic

of glamor and
speed
and the bitter taste
of bleach

and i want a
shotgun
and a house in
the country

the promise of
immortality

and i laugh when
you put the knife to
your wrist

when you put your
hands through
the bedroom window

i either bruise you
or ignore you
and you always beg
for more

in love like a
bad top forty song

and i’ll let you be
an addict
if you let me be
a failure

just show me
that smile

noose

another
thirteen year-old
suicide in
the first tentative days
of spring

the sun big and beautiful
and without heat

the noose tight at
both ends

it’s a small price to pay for
electricity
or the atomic bomb

nothing crazy horse
could’ve seen coming

nothing reagan
ever pretended to care about

and on good days
the highways still take
the rest of us
where we have to go