CALAMITY, You wore a soldier’s uniform. I took a wreath of skins. We bloomed. Radium & sky going down like your mouth on mine. In my killing-dreams every bullet was a kiss, each house owned by thieves. Imagine the stars are widows. They live alone & drink early, licked on occasion by a tongue of cloud. The twelfth house rules secrets when all you have is trigger. Now the rain reminds me. I was just a girl. The night wrought a tent between us. He made warnings of love where none lived & you were my savior, neither widow nor wife. I was your apprentice, taking up the rifle. Yours, Annie FLOOD SEASON, LOCUST TIME Rivers divide earth & fill the divide or more: On the plains we must endure A secret surfacing, silt-truth thick in the mouth, flood: Or locust time: Dry, nothing, God’s sky rising from the earth certain & desperate Everything measured in the time the wind takes to blow it away Grandmother went without speaking the season she lost a baby & the stream’s rushing Bled into the thrum of milk, breasts soldered in gauze: A stained gingham unearthed at her death That year, said a son, the greasy moon of his fingernail brief to the hem Snow melted, water rose obliterating until shoots came from the ground & life again, belly round by autumn: Or: My aunt staring at the pattern of cracked earth each morning: Went mad, waiting for a message to tell How you face noon Go on in the wake of a husband shipped out for Korea & the roof nearly blown from the house Those years we had next to nothing, she said, tightening her fist down to zero & hope broke away like a continent in my chest, daughter born in a locust time: No sweet in my acid, except The neighbor-girl’s legs were strong like a boy’s & deserved worship in denim— The kiss she gave was like coming home after a long absence Going down to the root cellar Discovering a way to breathe When the temperature hits a hundred degrees::Desire:: became not a statue but cavern & damp Constants revealed despite circumstance: delicate bone of the collar, shudder of pleasure discovering that with the slightest stretch All releases back into sleep, colors behind closed eyes, dark & bitter coffee at dawn & touch: Each time we push a child like a stone through our body we suckle him until the next season arrives with its news Subjected to a world that forgets::We survive because we don’t understand Exactly what we’ve lost: the boys tied that butch neighbor-girl to a tree & beat her until she lost an eye My aunt locked the screen door against the officer who came bearing the news Just before sleep, the next baby loosened his grip on grandmother’s arm— Too much like death: Warnings are plenty::Or no message waits Outside: a steady rain, or dust Copyright 2010 © Proem Press Website By Solution Services