"Licking the Open Wound of You"

From the mottled quilt of recollection

I absentmindedly pull the loose threads

of our patchwork history.

The tension of your shoulders

that thrilled me as we made love

in crisp autumn leaves.

The silent sonatas I wrote to

the curve of your throat as you

swallowed beer from an upturned bottle.

The shine of your graygreen eyes

that buoyed me on the leaden

storm-washed sea we sailed.

My pearl pink vulnerabilities

Unravel with each tug, exposing me

to the world’s naked indifference.

"Maternal Requiem"

The faded plastic of the institutional chair

sticks to my chubby thighs as I twist

my wedding band to wring out the guilt.

You always feared I would bring

you to die in one of these places.

The nurses shuffle down the hallways,

reminding me of Eliot’s women and their

conversations on Michelangelo. It was you

who taught me to love them

even before I tied my own shoelaces.

Shamed, my eyes never take themselves

from the faded carpet.

Instead, they watch memories of you

plaiting love knots into my hair

as I read by the old gas furnace.

"Midnight Confession"

We left the windows open that night
to let the cold front pay the bills.
Knotted up under faded yellow sheets,
I listened to traffic whoosh by holding
a silent salon with the water-stained ceiling.

I listened as you breathed sleep deeply into
your barrel chest. Wondered what dreams
had come to comfort you, while I endured
the tedious torment of Lady Midnight
pecking away at the flimsy walls of my heart.

At daybreak, I lacked the courage to tell you
her advice, or the reasons for my disappearing act,
just days before our first Christmas together.
Instead, I whispered my feelings
of detachment into your sleep deafened ear.

"Midnight in the Emergency Room"

For Jarrod

I...

…Sat amidst the throng of humanity

and listened to the bleach blonde teenager

wail in her mother’s lap. Mascara running

down her cheeks in twin rivers of fear. Her face

resembling a melting harlequin.

…Followed the teal green nurse with shoes

quiet as a nun’s cloister—past the whoosh of machines

breathing for those whose loved ones

could not let go.  Past the beeps

that indicated life still pulsed within each darkened room.

…Carried your glasses and with my shaking hands

removed contacts from your pain glazed eyes.

On the bed near your arm, I saw a single drop of blood,

shed when you were given

the synthetic, transparent ambrosia of morphine.

And inside I collapsed—looking at the proof of your mortality.

…Waited while you slept awkwardly

in a gown thin as a Communion wafer,

your own clothes shamefully crouched

in a warm pile in the corner.

…Held the hand with the yellow bracelet listing your allergies

and listened to the hushed whispers

as the woman next door became a widow. 

…Felt the shiver the servants of Egypt once knew

as the Angel of Death passed over their blood smeared doorways.

 "Moonlight and Magnolia"

Our love, bucolic and sorghum sweet,
born to the sound of crickets,
cradled in kudzu, has roots deep
in vermilion soil. Reminders
wrap your languid Savannah
accent in antique lace to
preserve it in the chambers
of my heart.

"Mourner"

Today I buried you

in the cold, unforgiving ground

made brittle with Arkansas winter.

Dirt slamming like gunshots

into the lid of your coffin,

each bang a dreadful reminder

of my own impending mortality.

My black dress clung uncomfortably

to my swollen body.

The skirt barely containing my chubby thighs,

as I attempted to sit demurely and honor you

with nerves grated raw

as flintrock under the raven’s talon.

Everything done to custom,

right from the thirty-first psalm

to the last blind remembrance.

The lukewarm food eaten on

plastic plates. Tearful handshakes

and awkward introductions to

so-and-so’s lovely niece from Missouri.

But after all the incongruity of this day,

the news still comes on

precisely at six.

The top story is

about war in foreign lands,

but there is no mention that

you are gone.

"Nadir at the Zenith"

My muse survived each day on dreams

the color of air. Sustenance came

from the toughest bread.

She found life a red light burning

in the rain drenched darkness

on a barren road of solitary journey.

Searching for hope, supposed evergreen,

she found a vacant playground

in the afternoon heat, listless swings

in a random breeze.

Her quest for knowledge became pointless,

an expired library card on the ground,

frayed and mangled from past use.

Desire consumed her, and she answered

that Siren's call only to find

a bullet punctured “Do Not Enter”

notice clinging to a barbed wire fence,

sagging like the belly of a new mother.

Finally she looked at love, greeting

card emotion, lying amidst loose change

and litter of a junk drawer. Victim

of domestic warfare in an unmarked grave.

Having reached the rainbow’s end,

she found the promised pot barren,

and died at my weary feet.