.

another diagnosis, another glum return

      from sickness. I want to have good words

      to say to you when I come home, but seem

      stuck on the differences between a quiet

      and a silence: that what finds its way to voice

      with us hopes for more than spent uncertainty

      and the ceaseless, steady thaw of my belief.

      THE JILTED HUSBAND SPEAKS

      What comes forward from darkened fields this winter? How long

      can we deceive ourselves? Cold, true like a stray dog, nuanced

      like a gossip’s words. Should we try to make it through another winter?

      Drifts and pulp-white sweeps, sleet cuts into dirty snow—

      we’re baubles packed in antique curios, rising early

      to battered banks and crystal trees, teeth brushed white as winter.

      Our mix—bitter bickering or loathing’s hollow swell. And when you

      touch my hand in bed the only thing I know is how to melt away,

      as you’ll return to his front door—shadowbox, weaving winter.

      Constellations tell this one each night. Graffito fixed above,

      ages spent retelling songs. The lie rehearsed till vivid and complete.

      Corvus, fly away or hold your stupid tongue this winter.

      Our minds arrayed in hail and damages—shut-ins to the storm

      and servants to the haze. Choking down dull serial, swallowing

      equal parts discomfort and disdain when we touch once all winter.

      In the dusky park’s bright snow, I walk into the storm: frantic white,

      orange lamp-lit prints, my squeaking boots. We are both

      the pond and ice, both the street and filthy slush of moonless winter.

      My body’s built of frozen earth and yours from mine. We’ve dressed up

      our disgust with self-doubt. Incriminate myself again? I speak nothing,

      wishing I could turn the bare skin of my back away from winter.

      SLAVE WALL

      Along that dusted drag, cut through the thicket, rise slabs

      of stacked stones from some hundred years ago.

      The craggy course lurching farther than my eye allows—

      dead arrangements with the past and harder truths piled

      to the knee, defying budding cramps of thorny weeds

      and stretching like a snake dividing lines of property.

      This records the era’s cruel, brutal trade—blind power

      eating at the heart. How does a wall get made into an altar?

      Which fractured rock reminds us of the hate we hide away?

      Each rugged memory of history’s chains, each raw split

      making known the past. And this is how we go about

      remembering it here: Kentucky River to county line,

      we tally up the evil heaped, stone by daunting stone.

      THE HOLE

      I remember your face surprised

      at what was missing

      as we stood at Ground Zero,

      looking in Manhattan’s mouth.

      The buildings on the block

      still draped in sheets, frocked statues.

      Rain and mist arriving with us

      to fill the gap and soak our coats.

      You said I love you, and I thought

      how strange and sudden we can be.

      What comes after a moment

      when you’re still and staring?

      Tragedy made us hungry and dumb—

      a long walk and night ferry home,

      clicking photos of the cityscape,

      absent two jeweled reaches to the sky.

      What should have come,

      and what comes in the distance,

      is that we’re hardly more

      than intimate strangers, and I

      should have said it back.

      But there were sounds

      I couldn’t make then and the ones

      we heard had to be enough—

      taxis bleating out, flags clapping

      deep above our heads, boots

      against the ground. I said

      nothing back, and now

      there’s nothing but a hole

      in me, fathomed with regret.

      CONTEMPLATING THE EGG

      If it’s blamelessness you want, stay in bed.

      At the moment you crack an egg you’ve sinned.

      As what’s careless and rote—a state, a taking place—

      will open. The egg will crackle

      its hundred laughed hellos at your thoughtless repetition.

      And you won’t hear since you’re so busy

      planning the day, your simple indestruction. Impervious begins

      your wrong turns and you forget

      this has to end, that this might be the last thing that you kill—

      finality cradled in the hand,

      what small oval and your hunger for the inside. All of it

      coming out so easily: you

      flick your wrist and let the day begin.

      MY GRANDFATHER SINGS AGAIN

      I found a cassette with your voice singing.

      The wheels of the tape turned away from time

      to let me hear your rendition of Folsom Prison Blues.