Bloody Mary’s venomous flames can curl;
They can shrivel sinew and char bone
Of foot, ankle, knee, thigh, and boil
Bowels, and drop his heart a cinder down;
And her soldiers can cry, as they hurl
Logs in the red rush: “This is her sermon.”

Farmers in the fields, housewives behind steamed windows,
Watch the burning aircraft across the blue sky float,
As if a firefly and a spider fought,
Far above the trees, between the washing hung out.
They wait with interest for the evening news.

The holes that filtered you before,
Like swamp dogs, open mouthed, are sleeping.
Their mud has sunk between your fault lines
And their bed
Rocks at the end of your corridor.

They are killing her again.
She said she did it
One year in every ten,
But they do it annually, or weekly,
Some even do it daily,
Carrying her death around in their heads
And practicing it. She saves them
The trouble of their own;
They can die without ever making
The decision. My buried mother
Is up-dug for repeat performances.

Here fuchsia is not sun.
It is the skin of your forehead
Tightening like pomegranate.
And these seeds spilling out
Are not your thoughts,
Your life,
But the undoing of your life
As you wander
The corridors of this
Ship, trying to find
Home.

Under lemons
the size of swollen fists,
Joseph speaks of Limoncello,
the first dream of the blossom
before its bud reseals.

Let’s begin with the first clean fact, James: This ain’t no war story. War stories are out–one, two, three, and a heave-ho, into the lake you go with all the other alewife scum and foamy harbor scum. But isn’t it a pity. All those crinkly, soggy sorts of laid-by tellings crowded together as thick and pitiful as street cobbles, floating mushy bellies up, like so much moldy shag rug…