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
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
one night you agree to go home with a guy
missing a tooth or two — he’s not someone
you work with, that’s one complication avoided
& who knows what his name is — you’ve drunk
rather more than usual despite knowing alcohol
doesn’t agree with you, facts you acknowledge
when you find yourself in a pickup weaving
down a narrow potholed driveway, facts
you acknowledge the full implications of
when in his water bed your head starts to spin
& you vomit, & vomit — that’s the end of that
you think, indeed, you remember nothing else
until morning when despite a mild recurrence
of nausea & no toothbrush, sigh, you agree
to join him in the shower — it’s not clean —
where you ask yourself why you’re naked
worse yet, sober, with no-name — oh well
a body’s a body, you do what you want to do
one by one, three, then four, the donkeys
shamble into town, linger at street corners
snuff choice blooms from flower beds
brightening the paths in the town square
someone owns the donkeys, or claims to
but he sets them loose to block roads
surprise & dismay tourists, nibble fruits
the produce sellers shout & rush to rescue
none wear straw hats or ribbon-braided
manes or tails, no, the donkeys are unkempt
are childhood, carnival, insolence, mayhem
nights, corralled under stars, they caterwaul
