Poetry

Cutting down Chambers St. 

my pinky toenail comes clean off.

Another little ghost 

What if each time
you caused pain
a small, round stone
was put in your pocket
pebbles for inducing
self-doubt

That one smelled 
like a Bradford pear 
you said. 

St. Stephen’s Day: home unsettled, 
a rupture, and here the ruched 
branch has turned itself outward,

its soft, bright innards held up 
along the path. At first, a golden

Women used to wean their babies
By painting their breasts black.
Hurricane clouds are black.
The Earth is weaning us.

Before I leave for good, I lift the pie server a final 
time, drop the receipt facedown next to the lemon 
blueberry slice, then my apron in the parking lot

On a narrow plinth in the corner 
of the gallery, a stone portrait:
a man, his mouth unlipped

Pink is the Tuscan sunset. Pink
Are the Vietnamese monk pates
Bobbing under Piero’s True Cross.
Pink is plenty, pink is joy.

Like heat he seeks them, 
            my son, thirsting 
to learn those

he don’t know 
            are his dead— 
some with his name

A March sky pinned with stars—
purple, almost, and a blue mist in the wheat stubble.
Under the laburnum, we waited—
the chains of leaf, its cascades of gold flower
gone, and the whole tree drooping