Curse
 
I write the wind picking your house from the lawn
as I cook,

shaking as we shake on God’s fork—
I write the wind, your house,

the bones’ old alphabet
gone clinking off the plate.

My throat shakes
to feed you

sadness, the ripest nest,
secret egg and hinge—earth, shell, your casket—
 
 
 
 
The Pear
 
Many pears have grown and fallen
since I began to understand pears.

They are not easy to understand:
rest one in your palm and consider

how surprising. Sniff the skin of the pear.
Be, yourself, a fruit peeled for sniffing.
 
 
 
 
Irrecovery
 
A bee floats to the east,
violin the size of a bean.

Mother waves a fluffy yellow—

hospital beds clink
in their wards:

mattresses,
doorways, open.

Mother waves a fluffy yellow—

doctors nod like bubbles
in a little wind,

nurses extend from ground
to hair, totter along hallways.

Mother waves a fluffy yellow—

Look, say the fragmentalists to their eggs,
Look—our hammers.
 
 
 
 
Not
 
A bird lays eggs outside the hospital window—
heedless of an old woman’s leg, crooked

                                                      out into the air,
shaken like the windy corn.

*

Flies happen by, snagged on tongues or webs.
Goats have nothing good to report,
hens witless in their nests—

              through pastures and hospital aisles
              sniffs a snout too old to end, yeah

              through pastures and aisles,
              sniff-sniff-sniff.

Each puppet hospital announces the end
of dolls, but hens go on bumping in the sun,
goats wave their fine asses through the grasses—

              in each nest and hospital bed
              sniffs a snout too old to end, yeah

              through straw and sheets,
              sniff-sniff-sniff.

A pork chop lays face down in a pile of mustard greens,
months of living passed by like a preface,
each piglet a stairway to bacon—

              at each critter’s tenders
              tug teeth too old to end, yeah

              each salty hide a tease,
              nom-nom-nom, yeah. Nom-nom-nom.