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shaking

Ashtray
    When the paramedics kicked his heart
back to life—the blooming light, doctors
cutting away his vocal cords, a lung—
Grandpa heard children tearing
through leaves. I promised not to tell anyone
about the flowerpot filled with ash,
the yellow-walled smell. I caressed his back
with a warm washcloth. Vibrator at his throat,
he buzzed his pleasure. Kneading skin
in silence, I traveled the universe
on his tattoos. Mountains and ships—acres
of faded ink. I rubbed circles, pushed
until his back roared, the ocean of his gravel-
skinned shoulder blade where a woman,
naked and fierce, dangled from an anchor,
winking her secrets: there is never a reason for fear,
simple as the crashing wave—Grandpa’s smile
as tumors turned him slowly into night.
How he held the X-ray to the window,
inhaling a cigarette through the hole in his throat
until it blazed, bright as an eye.

Silt
    â€” after Charles Baxter
    Â 
    In the dark, I count fingers,
Watch lightning spider
Over the mountain’s toothy peaks.
    Â 
    All the while, the cupola grows
Cloudy with accidents—
Dark blossoms sticky and wet,
    Â 
    Clinging shadowy with reincarnation.
Yesterday eight and, now, eleven
Memories distilled, frayed.
    Â 
    The neck-breaking spiral
Of this morning’s junco
Landing on a gnarled fence,
    Â 
    A surgeon’s fingers tapping
His way through afternoon sleep,
Breaking a heart into ballet
    Â 
    Or the several postures of pain
A body makes falling unconscious
In the bathroom while violins roar

    Â 
    On a television straining with blue
Light. The fatigue of healing
Interrupted by the susurrus
    Â 
    Of an empty shower. An ear, blood-
Smeared cheek and bit lip—
A sterile, sweating tiled floor.

Having Been Roused by the Sound of a Garbage Truck from a Moment of Unwaking in Which a Fishing Hook Is Pulled from My Hand by the Mouth of My Grandfather
    On the boulevard, morning’s cottonous haze hunches—
Already hot breath & car exhaust among the dahlias.
Stumbling to the trash can, the neighbor’s wave unbuckles
The sky. These are the beautiful ways we exist—rain needling
His sweatshirt, light orange-stripping from above. & blocks
Away, to the beer-bottled river where a wading man shouts
To a stray dog. His hands, bleeding & pruned, sweep suck-
Holes for cans—the same man having followed someone
He loves home last night. The same man who stared into a
Half-lit window, drenched in a midnight heat. This insomnia
Is more deafening than the buzz. Cracks moaning when
You walk that same water during winter’s deep freeze. More
Important than the head-tilt when watching your pickup
Wrap around a phone pole. Headlights are always
Swerving now. Not yet, they flash, not just yet. Soon there
Will be digging in the lilacs. Boots will pit the thicket. Soon
Will be the simmer, the hollow of failing fruit.

The Butcher Dreams
    Butcher paper, breasts, fresh snow.
I hacked whole flocks of chicken,
blade orange with rust.
    Â 
    We swung slabs of beef
from hooks. Heavy shadows
dripping through freezers, steam.
    Â 
    White aprons hungry for blood,
we used our weight to split
ribs, break bones.
    Â 
    Moans, the ripping of our saws.
We struggled, pink fingers,
pork against glass.
    Â 
    Late into night, I’d lie exhausted.
Weary brain unfolding
like a lotus, intricate map of the heart.

Arpeggio
    Outside the smoking & beard-burdened trees—
& always again, it is winter
    Â 
    Always again children streak into traffic, & again, & always,
I’m decapitated
    Â 
    & feel as though someone is lip-tracing
    Â 
    The zippers of my self-inflicted bites & it is true—
the only thing I can
    Â 
    Fully understand about sickness is a tractor dragging a stolen
ATM machine
    Down main street Or a body flinging itself
    From a train bridge & the sparks Lightswirl
& the sparks
    Â 
    This is all about hunger, I said to the man next to me
in the waiting room
    Â 
    Pointing at the bruises Jesus