Wintering Over

November days I scour the woods

for windfall, blowdown . . . young trees

the high winds tore or toppled, old trunks

not yet rotted into fresh earth, uprooted

white pine, its bark gone, pale dry limbs

I snap off, drag & carry, align & pack down

twigs & limbs & trunks all rise into great

piles — over-winter dens for skunks & voles

weasels, rabbits, & mice . . . a snow-clad

mound mimes an igloo — now picture

feasts, song & dance, the partnering off

plumping wombs, young in fur-lined nests

such imaginings might be, or might not

possibly my brush piles simply rot

Black Swamp Gooseberry

I grasp the thorny-stalked, lobe-leafed

plants near their base & yank up

the roots, shallow & widely branched

they leap from the soil, a wad of tangle

no flowers, no fruit, too many thorns

sheath all but the oldest stalks, thorns

eager to snag my skin when I walk

the woods, so I weed them out, as if

I deserve to shape the woods, decide

which plants live, which plants die

which fallen limbs must be tossed

onto piles, which young trees lopped

the woods observe me, endure me

someday soon they know I’ll be gone

Hawaiian Land Snails

759 species identified

more than 300 species extinct

they cannot travel backward

their shells are already fossils

snails emit & follow slime

preferably slime of kin or friend

Hawaiians hear snails sing

a sound like crickets

maybe it’s the sound of wind

crossing an open operculum

snails are hermaphrodites, not she

nor he but they . . . also they mate

one’s sperm for the other’s egg

sperm to use now or cache

snails lay eggs, snails give birth

newborns are fleshy, flabby

fused to the calcium-carbonate

seed of a spiraling shell

that grows larger & larger 

a mobile home that roams

the snail’s Lilliputian foraging

space, until the snail dies

shells hundreds of millions of

years old . . . traces of lost feet

from species more durable

than humans will ever be

Dukes Barbecue

the wait staff sets checkered tables with salt

pepper, ketchup, napkins, & a loaf of white bread

what we called Wonder Bread when I was a child

the loaves are sealed in plastic, & we never

open them, never eat a slice, but work crews do

as do ginormous fat men, we wonder aloud

whether open loaves are replaced between diners

why eat bread when once you pay for your meal

you can go back for more as many times as you want

brisket, ribs, chicken, red rice, butter beans, fried okra

banana pudding, sheet cake . . . grease, salt, & sugar

I try not to go more than once a quarter, friends go

once a week, do work crews go every day?

afterward I feel queasy, maybe a slice of white bread

would settle my stomach, when I pass the Dukes sign

I turn my eyes to the other side of Folly Road

Premier Medical, Charleston Fire Department

Station 13 . . . places I could stop & beg for relief

Red Is the Color of China

my brother dug a deep, then deeper hole

the backyard hole to nowhere

what kind of a family allows for that kind of hole?

through the earth to the other side, he said

like the cop who dug until his shovel

hit something solid, the wrist of a murdered woman

if you dig long enough you might find the why

. . . accident, crime, bad blood, old age . . .

knowing the why doesn’t relieve the ache

from the window I watched my brother dig

or I stood close but not too close to the rim of the hole

in case he decided to throw dirt at me

he was covered in dirt while I was taught to be clean

it took me ten years to relearn dirty

to throw sod root-side up into trenches

pile dark soil on top, my first growing season

. . . babies, vegetables, extra-marital tomfoolery . . . 

when photographs are black & white

blood might be paint, or vice versa

Capital Punishment

two states choose to execute two convicted men

perhaps they did wrong, perhaps they did no wrong

twenty plus years in prison means nearly every cell

in the men’s bodies has been replaced three times

their bodies remake themselves yet can’t shed

their criminal identification . . . now they’re dead

to satisfy someone’s powerful urge to rule others

because each of us individually cannot rule ourself

shall it be life or death? be my guest, you choose

Self Portrait

a framed pencil sketch

hangs cattycorner from my crib

an amateur’s rendering of

a hand, a baby’s head, a wrist

someone thought the execution

good enough to frame, good enough

to hang in a baby’s room

parts of a baby for the baby

ivory paper, smudged gray lead

clear glass, a black frame

how old am I when I recognize

my own self? dissected

the parts refuse to cohere, head

without a neck, hand here

wrist there, no arm, no body

think about who must have hung it

how many years pass before

I smash this mirror, splinter

the frame, tear up the sketch

bury my remains in the attic

The Hidden Bones of a Wall

a sawdust-clotted web

an earwig’s fractured corpse

one sawzall a halftone below the other

explains what cannot be explained

the idea that humans are gods

witness this wheelchair pope

colonizer, predator

peel back his whited robe

shrive him, skin alive him

let gall pollute the cracked soil

boiled from the blood of commoners

they creep up behind you

nodding stickseed, six-legged prey

species begin to be missed

spinners spin again

until some time afterward

you don’t see the last of something

on we cower to nowhere

The Man Who Died

the worm in the apple is the knowledge

that once, for a time, you worshipped me

how that set me apart, made me less real

more a mirage in the mind of a sad man

who’d had a great deal to drink, the mirror

of me worshipping you, an imaginary man

sitting across from me, distanced from me

by the white tablecloth, the green bottle

wine we’d both drunk to the lees — lees 

that now unsettle me, a fibrous sediment

damp, dark red, smelling of fruit, of trees

Right to Life Circa 1900

I long to console my grandmother after

the death of her child, three-month-old

Lena, how swifly she goes from suckling

to choking, gasping, her fingers & face

blue

         Grandma’s futile breasts ache

she doesn’t speak, the five children

sit where they’ve been told to sit

while Aunt Emily wraps the body

Grandpa says, “There, there,” to anyone

listening

                 no sooner the child buried

he comes to Grandma in the night

“No, no” she whispers, but nothing

she can say or do stops him, his

rights prevail, eight more times she

births his child

                            never again cares 

the rift too wide, her world undone

mothering over, she pales away

older children raise the littler ones