Their Honeymoon
lost in kimberlite diamond and coal shoveling out a pan in Arkansas
where will we go
their wedding, ours
with the water hose mud
daylight turns to
bubblegum,
stop your smacking
another time, another tune what is love
a Santa Claus machine quests for union
what if we never returned to our wedding, theirs
a map in the glovebox and I never read it
I got romantic in my usual way
the starting spot
we ordered Liebfraumilch
you remember that
turned on the TV as if to forgot some presence
at the motel in Hot Springs you had never wanted to sing you tore your nightgown
fretting
the spa, the cure
we shared a tenderloin
called
it dinner
I bit your earlobe, made you shout
already pregnant, you found a snake bit kit in a gift shop
I read your signal, I was prescient
1) small blade, listed as scalpel 2) tourniquet, not listed as tourniquet, listed something like personal binding rope 3) suction thingee, device, listed as suction thingee, just kidding 4) instructions
anecdote?
the baby became our best hope
or, please don’t tell that Tonto and Lone Ranger joke
was there something I forgot to purchase
I’m four again, I’m superman
until I jump and fail to fly through the secret side-effect of your lies, you must admit I'm only five
but I was four
I adored you like the mirror
you always said IT was my mother
please wake me if you see her car
Charlie Brown, Peanuts my lunchbox, my Thermos
about grown, child again
raining, the dark cool as a cave, forgetting
home
once upon a time, in the car she hollered
the shadow
now sitting, waiting time, the time, in my treehouse
no idea
my lunch, the peanut butter the chips
an alphabet
scratching the tree trunk with my pocketknife
last night
the last time my dog Lucy barked on the front porch, her dog corpse
the wound (or was it the shadow?)
a cow must have kicked her I tried not to cry
this morning, milked dry
I've decided, school no more— adventure
proved only Symbolic
and I missed you
this twist, this turn of words
milk in her purse
a hole in the wind, my longing
whose circuit the end—
sky erupts
clock, reverbs, reverbs the clock
approximate helicopter
a child missing
it’s _______, I’m lost
errant
breakdown—
I went searching no promise
pair of shoes hands huge with grief
the medication was not enough
I had to leave for work the car parked
grief
she says to me
a wall made of sea shells if we had lived by the sea
a department store mannequin if we had lived near the city
a dress for the mannequin if you didn’t have a wife
but I had you long enough
a clock made of rubber bands if we had had the supplies
the house on paper the death, the good-bye
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