each Palestinian child killed
is someone I will never know
& though you might say
I wouldn’t know them anyway
because before they’d have grown up
I’ll be dead, still, we might have exchanged
fleeting bursts of air, theirs
blown here from Rafah in Gaza, mine
flown there from Salisbury in Vermont
world travelers, sibling orphans
they bombed into fragments
or found frozen in rain-soaked tents
I shriveled inside worn garments
we who die in our killing times
Ovid’s creation story is so predictably male —
natus homo est — I expect Ovid saw homo
as a white Roman male, a norm from which
other colors & genders deviate. A priori,
I reject homo & translate Ovid’s phrase as
humans are born, not being snootish enough
to opt for humanity is born, also not quite yet
determined to feminize Ovid, nudge him
toward woman is born — problematic, since
my preferred future is a gender-irrelevant
world where woman is as impertinent as man.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
