Biologists have found that more than 1,300 species of animals will make meals of their own families.
—Newspaper Item
Deepest night and the growls
you wake to are of the belly
not the throat, that ache
ripples from the gut rather
than from that mythical heart
the songwriters celebrate,
muscle pulsating, waiting
to be fed.
Heartburn is a condition
of digestion, not emotion.
Still, the temptation
to spin on spine’s axis
to your partner defenceless
in sleep is strong, nibbling
at lips that cannot protest,
gorging yourself on willing flesh,
blind mother turning in the nest
driven by something deeper
than hunger, devouring
placentas of love.
Under a tree, I sit
growing roots, listening
to the immense noise, opening
my eyes to light
without end.
The sun splinters, a narrow
man comes down
the road, stops
to listen, then lopes
the dusty way he’s come.
The road is empty, the sky
a hole letting in
the promised menace.
The iron ring of his foot
on the cobblestones, a circle
in a pool of water. I wanted to be a good man he cried as he fell but only the air heard, the thin cruel air. So quickly then this eggshell shatters. But what shall we do with this dark?
after the fair
we took down the tents
wiped the cotton candy
from our feet
and washed our hands
in a stream of water
from a cold iron pipe
the livestock had kissed.
the sun was going down
and the children were gone
leaving deflated snowmen
of torn tickets
and apple sticks
in the swamp
where the midway had raged.
we walked hand in hand
the wind rippling soft
at the ribbons on our breasts
swirling the eddies of gold
left behind by judges
who should have known better
having known us so long.
well there’s always next year
and the years after that
rolling like meadows
across the horizon
to bring down the sky
and it’s not the winning
that matters
but the way we die.
for Mickey
balancing on the high
wire, your parents’ world
dizzy at your feet, ants
in a cage charlie chaplining
below, you feel your stomach
blossom against your heart,
your heart itself soaring
through air without benefit
of a net, your eyes blurred
not from tears but the speed
of your blood finding its own
balance, its own
way
jumping off the high wire you find yourself falling deliriously into yourself
If Mullin’s Hardware is really
the centre of the city
as the old-timers say, forget
the maps, the city plan,
then what of the Centre
of the Arts, Queensbury Downs,
what about Market Square?
They’re deserted tonight, empty
as the shells of gypsy moths, their
eyes alight with visions of the city
trembling in their wake, a naked
city, its bum bare as the day
it was born.
Tonight, the city’s pulse runs
ragged along 13th, a red current
of light leading—where else?—but
to Mullin’s, not just the centre
of the city but the universe,
to hell with the maps
and compasses, to Mullin’s,
where a woman in a red bandanna
is dancing alone in the shadow
of the cathedral, its hands thrown up
in joy, her eyes filled with light
reflected from the sputtering streetlamp,
her feet just barely touching
the ground. You and I
are getting to know each other
in ways they haven’t dreamed of
at the track or the Superstore,
in ways explained for a dime
in the hardware, third aisle
at the end.
buddy, back east
time goes back
and there ain’t no way
to stop it
out here
time matters more
due to the growing
and shape of things
take the time
yourself
to think it over
and come around
life