Aug 2012
umbrae
for Genevieve
your prayers include a terrible notebook, an invalid friend, and a man believing separately that we are here to place turtles upright. when you walk into the ocean you walk into the ocean on your hands. you do this to protect your knees. many think you are magnificent and these many you are on the verge of telling about the Saturdays that bore you and about the spider you repeatedly squash. the resurrected spider that is not a gift. if you could you’d give your youngest son a woman he could either swim through or swoon inside. a woman who could put him to sleep and rock in a chair the boat of her belly so untroubled to be thinking twice about twins. you’d be sad, or sleepy, and get to choose.
before I go to war
the dark readies in the oven.
my father washes with a wet sock a knee exposed.
my mother
wears one dry sock which she removes
and makes into a puppet. or an oven mitt.
both
silence the hand.
idolatry**
a red wheelbarrow, maybe-
but not
so much
depends
on a poem
about it
for Genevieve
your prayers include a terrible notebook, an invalid friend, and a man believing separately that we are here to place turtles upright. when you walk into the ocean you walk into the ocean on your hands. you do this to protect your knees. many think you are magnificent and these many you are on the verge of telling about the Saturdays that bore you and about the spider you repeatedly squash. the resurrected spider that is not a gift. if you could you’d give your youngest son a woman he could either swim through or swoon inside. a woman who could put him to sleep and rock in a chair the boat of her belly so untroubled to be thinking twice about twins. you’d be sad, or sleepy, and get to choose.
before I go to war
the dark readies in the oven.
my father washes with a wet sock a knee exposed.
my mother
wears one dry sock which she removes
and makes into a puppet. or an oven mitt.
both
silence the hand.
idolatry**
a red wheelbarrow, maybe-
but not
so much
depends
on a poem
about it
