Author
Carry abroad the urgent need, the scene,
to photograph and to extend the voice,
to speak this meaning.
Voices to speak to us directly.
—MURIEL RUKEYSER,
“The Book of the Dead”
MNEMOSYNE TO THE POET
For you, memory is but
an oil lamp to snuff, left to
smoke. Diademed by earth’s
velvet mantle. So easy
for you to ignore: hadal
press of sea, the open
vein’s plumes,
how they wheel like
a maelstrom up and down.
My sight spills through
waves of old, blown
glass. I am not permitted
to turn, pillow to cheek,
and wait for sleep to find me.
Am not permitted
to learn how not to look.
ELEGY, WIND-WHIPPED
May 23, 2011, Joplin, Missouri
1. REFUSE
Doll hair—brown yarn—
loops round a hickory’s jagged
limb and she dances
the wind like a human body
clinched above
the gallows. See—your own
eyes stitched open as hers—
there is no difference, batting
or flesh, still you will
hang, emptied by my breath.
She could be dead. Easily
she could be your daughter.
2. HAMPSHIRE TERRACE
Search and mark with a spray-
painted X. Nothing left
to salvage. You do not like
to say it, but you need
the dogs. No tools you possess
can help you find silence.
We’re always hopeful but we briefed
the guys to plan for the worst.
Crowbar, chainsaw, chisel
you dig, hail beating.
In time, you think,
please let me be in time.
3. LIST
Tilt, slant, heel—a careening, a leaning, to one side. Incline. To please, to like, to desire. To cut away in narrow strips, stave and plank, to shear. To lister: to furrow the land—plow and drill—drop and cover. Who is the one that compiles? Roll clouds scroll the sky. Call it and we will listen: anything but there is no list, there is no list.
4. CATECHISM
What is the chief end of human life?
Sirens like a trumpet’s call.
Roll the beds to the hall
and pull the blinds—too late—
What reason have you for saying so?
Burst rose of sharded light.
IV lines ripped loose, beds thrown
against the wall, blood-drenched
What is the highest good of man?
and bathed in life. And these
are the lucky ones, the blessed
who walk among our ruin.
What is, what reason, what is
the good of man?
The very same. Bathed in life,
the burst rose. O sharded
light, sirens like a trumpet’s call.
5. BROKEN
Stripped and strafed—another
casualty—their skeletons
spear the sky. Shag-barked
hickory, catalpa, a 135-ringed oak.
Debris perches like turkey
vultures on their arms.
Each one, a splintered body
to be hewn and dragged out
of town, put to the pyre.
They deserve this much, at least.
Smoke masses, and
grief re-greens the sky.
6. MUCORMYCOSIS
puncture wound hard black
center —press—
let the pain remind you
