Two Poems

Two Poems
Q and A: Do you write about real stuff or do you make it all up?

I would like to say that I invented
how darkness sometimes twists

into light, heats the dust motes till they are a million flares,
fragile chests of fire. I would like to say

that I had no mother
but seemed to know just the same

the cool hand of love to fever, that I've never
spit or hummed or hated. I would like to say that

my brain is a little god churning out creation,
not the addled priest

who wakes up each morning, picks up his wicker basket
to fill with every dirty thing he finds,

who spends his nights hunched over silver polish,
buttons and spoons.

Even now, can't you hear
the clicking bones of my unlit, hissing strokes?



Q and A: Do you have any tips? Answer #1

I suggest a greedy heart, an appetite for hoarding.
Recall the two brothers whose house collapsed under the strain of lifelong collection?

Imagine the second floor creaking laboriously,
like a ship deck, the horn a wheezing lung, before it buckles and gives.
I like to believe they held hands as they had before jumping off

the cement pool's edge wearing handmade trunks which matched,
not only each other's but their kitchen curtains, the love-seat pillow.
(Frugality is a family trait.)

If they'd had enough time, before the house's last heaving breath,
they could have found the pillow, the curtains, each suit,
newspaper-wrapped
as if fragile, in a box marked "summer, 1949," and within the stitches,
their mother's hands.

Who would give that away?You must not only understand the brothers,
their broken, blood-bruised, fatty bodies dug from the rubble,

but the boys they were. Take them in on a given afternoon,
play the neighbor who troubles over their wiry mother, buzzing

the boys' heads
so close with the clippers she leaves nicks that scab,
and collects the fine loose hairs to stuff a pillow.

Invite them in. Let them warm up to the cat.
Set out cookies on napkins which they will wrap,
half-eaten and keep forever. It's tricky.
This keeping.Don't let them see your daughter.