We did not have a connection
so much as a small room full
of scattered electricity.

I know when it is winter.
      When the books begin to show
               their thinner side of verity

and the pages not the color butter,
      but a rusted wheel blend
               with words wheedling away
from memory as the crisp night settles
       into bed. Too dark to retain our
               archives; too withdrawn

from this warm tragedy tale
       turned from mine.

In midday I watched the children play
on the west side of town
outside my classroom window.
I thought how bright the paper is inside
with blues and limes and how proud
the colors stand within the skin to be
a pioneer for the small and tender.

With the last of the spiders wiped
with pencil textiles I could hear
these tiny howls, a gathering of five boys
throwing around a football remaining invisible
behind thumb greased glass.
Surely children’s beady-eyes bright in hopes
for resulted gutting knees and grass filled mouths
is a life lesson of it’s own.
But, outside is a war and I am watching
against a patchy globe rondure the blur
of a boy beaten down around the ball;
the white lace shinning off
a sunlit fire pit of loss.

It was like watching nerves of growth
as an oceans current; the ripples
carrying them along onto an islands sand.
The red shirted boy holding onto himself,
clenching for breathe while the others like flies
when surrounding the pig; hovering over meat
raw and stiff.

(After reading Dorothy Allison’s “To The Bone”)

That winter I did go crazy:
like a growing tire tear,
like naked sacked scrappers,
like the water waning sand
in the desert of your bones.

antidepressants, that I am not
some war that bereaves you
of your fix, your stark face blots
purpling stains under eyes glued
  
to the buzzing of insects by your lamp—
a light that catches a reflection of
their veined wings clear; like veins tamped
in brown, the black tar shoved

into your limbs, into my heart
the idleness in your eyes and pace
of your feet dragging, they impart
me of your glass maze chase

of mirrors cracking like teeth, a scrape
against each other, shattering to escape.