With Body pretzled up, skins converged to form
            branches of rivers, mouth slack and frozen to
            a permanent scowl of delirium and manners-gone,
            as many swears dripped from those dry, cracked lips.

One of my mothers – gumshoed from the alley’s way of family.
“Get gumption, girlie, because everybody is full of ****!”

I remember that lullaby, “A tiny turned-up nose, two lips just like a rose. She sits upon my knee, she means to the world to me.”

I spy the scar on my pinky finger from her cigarette.

Could the King be witness in the Room?
Were those buttons of hollow wood over her eyelids?

Wrung of cries – we didn’t see that coming,
though we heard the flies.
And Age’s stumbling rattle through the hallway.

Do you know who I am?
Do you remember me?
Should the window washer come another day?
This stubborn sovereignty over what is reality – the root beneath the porch, the fog on the windshield.

Loosen the grip on this natural plane,
            Please --

Woman of my Childhood, harvester of my manners.
            Stand until the grown-ups sit.
            Look away and bow your neck.
                        This was called the boxing match between Industry verses Inferiority.

Not child through birth – no –
            but life spawned by those
            strung-high fists.

There’s finality in this phone-call.
I heard it happened an hour ago.
            Treading grievances and grimaces, picking through a flowerbed only to stroke the weeds.
            Lifting boxes of Lead from reality to the Bridge of Dreams.
                        Frankly, I stole the gumption from your knotted mouth and
                        still cannot cry.

In a splinter of reason – I cast out the fundamental jibes of sacred hope.
            That promise held between dog and owner during business hours.
            Except there can be no homecoming.

The sickest liquor on the alleyway fence.