weeks were wasted,
but days perfected.
how unforgiving:
time, and him.

while your heart is breaking
in front of a fire;
the world still spins,
and hope dies dim.

Southern justice is the snake
that slithers up the tree
before the buzz
of  the lumberjack’s saw,
the duck of the head
to  fit it into the squad car,
the dark voice  
singing in a  dark cell
put on death row
before his trial,
convicted for the
color of his skin
before he was even born,
living everyday,
never hoping
for just mercy.

Every cut is a bleeding thorn,
every breath is a spread of fingers.
The ear records all its silences.

Lose a hand and it goes to the trash heap,
lose an ear and everyone will think of Van Gogh.

In the landfill
the hand discovers fire,
it discovers how to conquer the rats,
how to drive,
how to see the light,
how to play
as a child in the soft sand,
how to think to its advantage,
how to grow beyond
touch and feel,
how to taste the apple,
how to hear
the silence of the din,
how to love,
love itself,
the world,
the universe-

to think of itself
as something other
than a horror concept,
to think of itself
as a piano virtuoso,
to think it’s worth a body,
(not worth the bother of a body),
worth a companion five fingers,
(unworthy of mating with other digits)
all while ******* a doll’s head.

Thinking it’s worth a *****,
its palm forming a ******
but ultimately deciding
it’s not worth
the extra useless appendage
and the lifelines-


tasting the rain and discovering
it’s not an umbrella
just a receptacle to hold one.

It gets soggy, wrinkled.
It gets sick.
It gets cancer.
It loses its fingers
one by one.
Its creases wither.
It dies
and blows away
in the wind.

Its body mourns
its phantom limb,
stretches it new
mechanical appendages
and moves on.

My grandma’s favorite holiday was groundhog day.

I don’t know if she just loved the fanfare of it all;
If she thought it was so trivial and fun;
If Pansawtukee Phil was just too adorable;

Or maybe she was just a fan of Bill Murray?

(Which I mean—who isn’t?)

My grandma always had a knack for everything, not just the weird holidays:

It was continuing to remind me that penguins have knees,
And instilling at least one of her grandchildren with a love of the X-Files that never faded,
(Me again)
And people watching
from the car outside of Byerley’s —
Insisting it was going to be her novel
“Tales from the Parking Lot.”

She also used to tell us that my grandfather had been reincarnated as a cardinal.

And she would tell us,
In the springtime,
He, (or the cardinal,)
Would come visit.

And, my grandma adored talking.

She would tell anyone her life story
Whether they wanted to hear it,

Or not.

This included:  
nurses,
doctors,
a man named David at the Jewelry store,
some of my friends when we were just driving through on a road trip from college and stopped to say, “hello,”

Really, anyone who would listen.

She called it her gift of gab.

And, she was also really into scrapbooking
and creating slideshows of pictures
Simple ways of preserving the memories of loved ones

I don’t quite remember when her memory started slipping
When Alzheimer’s started digging it’s claws into
The facts, the stories...

Even the reality she knew and loved.

I’m sure, looking back, it was slow at first.
Like those first moments when Bill Murray wakes to the song “I Got You Babe,”

Again.

Not quite sure what is happening,
But confused.

The fear doesn’t begin until later,
As the events repeat again and again.

I remember my mother telling me of a moment
Where my grandmother was reliving her
Junior prom.

She lived with us then, and my mom had a baby monitor set up in her mother-in-law suite.

My mom woke to a crash through the baby monitor.
And when she rushed downstairs,
She found my grandma’s robes were laid out all around the room.

My grandma was on the ground,
The TV on top of her.

Her explanation of what happened is she was trying to steal the TV to buy a prettier dress.

In her lucid moments,
We told my grandma this story.

And she laughed
and laughed,
With the same confidence Bill Murray
has later in the film

Having accepted reality,
having accepted this fate.

Reliving days past
Knowing that a future
may never come.

It might be that the reason
She loved groundhog’s day was

The promise that spring is coming,
And with it, the cardinals,
And with it, new life.

My ears are burning up
I'm running out of breath
Is this love?
or maybe death?

    —Just two friends in a theatre
    with one falling for the other

Mr. Rogers grace exists
in miniature cities of kindness,

the tranquil tones of forgiveness,
level to the eye of a single frighten child.

For him, and in that moment,
that child is the  most precious
thing in the world.

He blesses them with positive ways
of dealing with their feelings;

the benediction of accepting them
for exactly who they are;

even when everything doesn’t
go exactly the way they hoped,

shows them how to smooth the
dissonance into a beautiful inner music;

store up the blessings
of an ordinary day;

love the ratty, special toy,
even as it grows old;

to know with absolute firmness,
as parents, that anything

mentionable is manageable
and to be human-

and that’s ok.

With the sound of sirens screaming outside,
ten knocks on the door, the shout of authority
flooding in from the red steel,
would Joe American give up Anne Frank
hiding in the attic among his dusty relics,
the crawl space shared with a family of rats,
living under the loose floorboards among
the stacks of hidden zombie apocalypse cash?

What if Jane American found Anna Franco
shuddering with her dos hermanos, madre, padre,
in the dark corners of her garage?

Would she give them 2 vests, 3 pair of pants,
two pair of stockings, a dress skirt,
jacket, shorts, lace up shoes,
wool cap, and scarf?

What if her daughter Sarah saw a black hijab Anah
patiently hidden in the foliage of their old oak tree?
Would she gift her her favorite blue fountain pen?

Would she embrace her, or if ordered,
break the neck of her rabbit?