next comes low light, centipede you couldn’t kill,
rain peeling the sides the house, buildings lean
forward, needle-like and green-gold, porch lantern
swing, pool overflow, you think again of sanguinity
in the bed, the pitch and the shed, no-one forms a hole
in the doorway, they swing and sink, your mind is sulfur,
you’re getting lost in looseness and evening, bedsheets
and somewhere a ball of twine, gray photo of retired
racehorses, a bottle of wine, also green-gold, half-empty
on the floor, while kindling the deal, God did you ever
think to ask her to save your own life, too? you asked the
doorway to shift into two, for your eyes to stop fraying at
light, for the tiles in his bathroom to stop their spinning, gauzy
and yellow, sixties style just like she wanted, what’s a gazebo
got on a basement, doorway range and stair arch, you follow
outside is thunder, you think yes, of course, you think, cross-
cut, again with the odysseys and heroes, singing then calling
the exes slouched against their doorways, empty space, the
absence of a lover, does a man become a hero, do you
become gorgeous or gorgon, the monsters were cutthroat
meaning cut at the throat, or, across many throats, snake
coats, an intersection of mud and flutter, grass patches
all yellow and begging for sacrifice, you should have taken
bundles of hair, discarded bottles, a small piece of a voice
you are called a hag, you are called a jewel, you are tempted
with soft tissues and sweetbreads, ignore the cousins in the
moss court down the street, your mind becomes a lightless
ditch, a twisted heel, let’s total the hammers and harpies
now harps, this fabulous storm ripping open stomachs
of roadkill, maybe I’m yours, I return to the tub every time
and imagine someone is cradling my body in the water
I ignore warnings of electricity in the pipes, sting of soap
low-hanging faucet, please lift the sword above your head
practice in the mirror before cutting out the heart of a father
drunk on the idea of memory, will they remember or will
they call you a horror, banish you into a tightly wrapped
forest, sycamores form and through the arches walk wolves
why compare their jaws, why romanticize teeth as play and
tongue as drip, rip, pin-sharp clip, they witness your awful
wingless body floating to the sky, no one will tell you when
it’s your turn to lift the weapon, drop your sword in the old
sand, they’ll tell stories of you, daughter as driftwood, not
yet cool enough to be compared to candy or wheels, ribbons
or wax lips, this is the way a sun forms through the trees
there was bloodshed—whose?—it all comes down to howls
bundled in cheesecloth, stories about naming your parents
and when you return home, you find not a light switch but
a tooth.
