Transformation and Transition
“Reversing a death is not the same as restoring a life.”—Sunita Puri
Watch his heart untie, an old pair of shoes shoulders slopped black & blue
laces and lungs let lose and words go in tangles fraying from all he knew
through the eyelets his truth unstitched Sine qua non, blue the hue where language
unscrewed the familiar familial thoughts now long along his jawline, remember
when they unbuckled the door and now vacationing birds come wings and omens, unglued
still she longs the forlorn days the bodies sway careening and upended in a lake canoe
find him, the dampened hallways find him, the noosed backstays of this backstage
unhung city, tobacco and vegan coupling and the city hearts white flailed bespoken news
remember the simple geometry of living and paperback, carboard on the curb underneath
entirety came, arms wide and the sun, unglued
late in Spring in a drive-by rain, falling you go small as pebbles car off the road
the view from a roof top her thumb nail blue, falls away newly used
shorn eyebrows in the morning light tongue patterns ink up the patter and promises scatter
food steps of the elderly syllables, tea-stained, innervated in raincoat’s calculus
of a wobbly night and falling flight between the silence and the noise, the crowd
the sweet bite of dendrite of licorice laced between fingers folded into a poem
at day, stanzas walk in the rain as the river turned up its heels the glamour of the ceiling
in May when we forgot our hearts language didn’t unlock old
doors not the key, the prance, not the soft-syllable of romance only you
if upon then a night late in Spring scribbled up by rain falling between tooth and pebble
you tree bark, scuffed up macadam where were they to see her and begin to call out
would you
recognize behind the tailpipes and skylarks, falling anew the sky to earth’s unused refuse
the fuselage of the refused sorrow’s dance the foxtrot still sooth as you watch from the sidelines
gravity takes her far travel un-bone the floor from the music the rafters from the gone
the countermeasure, the gravity grandmother’s sewing kit and black-spit bright shoes
her dead pulling up their socks unbox grandpa’s ghosts the drinks must be made, anew
a requirement, the science in the pew the light of the book’s binding where words tug and tag
at you, the gamble on gambolling as the earth hastens, the red clay
the soles up in the mud, the hen’s eggs cracked long ago and the hound realizes the licking
creak of the long slow leak of life let leaf-by-leaf go upon the creak and the crawfish
when you spoke of the openness of things, between your knees, the child braving fear off a summer cliff
another child falling apart by a hydrant’s spay another whose mother lost a key in a trailer, dying
of the crooked light and paper, scissor, rock racqueting over a field of rusted crops cops grown weary
as weeds pulled up-tight behind the bodega a murder of ravens descend and the quaking ascends
the postal train away in fright the land buckles and the feathers bathing the bottom of scampering feet
she rubs soft stones through her toes to ease the aftershocks auntie’s prescription
to recall the spinning in a dislocated room clinging as mama-ma and papa danced and clanged
around each other’s waist Spanish moss wedded to a tree, unkempt at night, there they were
and we, three bowed on our knees ripening the black fruit in the sun once bronzed, so
there was this poem and not the other nothing really done right the caps screwed on tight
and what other mistaken taken with our eyes closes and our teeth clenched and feeling the dark of night
where the break between the vowels and the plow, the silence and the rolled r, is
where is the break between the poem that first turned-up and the poem at the end of the page
where is the break between the pronouns and the sleeves unrolled, selves
where is the break between traditional and simplified, the language of languor
where is the break between the space of light outside and the hullabaloo under the door
where is the chariot under the sun run us
if upon a night late in Spring language wobbles away in a cart of rain and all the rest
if you stood right there between the shadow of the man and the stone wall and whispered
carry her with you, old man take the stories under your arms and tuck them under a porch
unplow the seeds in the fields and push them through a pill bright on a tongue
swallow, swallow
swallow everything away until the dying and the day is done
your heart people multitudinous and flaked by finger and dew
and the dancers over the oak floors the stars stomping bright-right on the tin roofs, sway
and lovers risk limb and loss and lamentation long stories uncoil and lives untie
language lay seadrift and the bone-twine too unwinds certainty, as we all bank away
hear the world crack, fledgling bamboo.