Must Leave Something
Smoke from a darling body
rises into an Alabama night.
She lets all her bones go,
but never dances around
any fire, or screams
her sorry gut punch into the air.
It’s just too hard for people
to hear about a dog killed
on the side of the road. Her mouth
stops her dead in her tracks,
but she tells herself: call
momma every day, drive
the car, mop the kitchen floor
because even the wind
outside slices down
the alley way and cuts
the corner of her house, and
when she prepares plates
of food for her husband
then puts herself to bed,
the wind says grief.
Momma as Death and Gate Keeper
She is a white pill
now, suspended in thin air,
and I hear her say she hopes
to come back down, hit
the ground, and grow
her body into a pine tree,
tall, alone. I say: I’d climb
you, knock your only cones
to the ground where the dirt
will swallow the seeds,
but I’m no arborist.
I don’t know enough
to make those seeds grow.
I just know how
to pick a tree clean,
and I know how to let
the death of it burst
inside me like the green
unraveling of the kudzu.
