One for You & One For Me
When the blackness whispers
Dying time to us—Come Lady-
Bug, come cockroaches, the night-
Crawlers come ready to coil
In our throats. So we tiptoe,
carve clouds’ every last word
In the lightning baffled air.
Beneath the floorboards the men
Who never came back crack
Their knuckles. Every house
Is either smoldering & about
To burst into flames or ash
That must be shoveled through
To find the teeth of people
Too slow. I would love
To believe in the eventual
Perfection of the after-
Daybreak light, that even
The most shattered beasts
Inside me can burrow
Themselves back whole & blossom
My flesh with a constellation
Of tiny, weeping hearts. But today
The sky is a meatpond aglitter
With gristle. The house is hot
& rashy & I am the moon
Ant staggering along the windowsill,
Determined to chew through anything
Determined to chew through anything
That gets in the way. Even myself.
The slick flesh of anyone hanging
Around in the slag heap of noon—
Ladybug, Sweet Ladybug—
Will riot & pudding & low.