forks and knives?

If I were delicious, would I honor the horseradish?

Jesus sat in the middle of one side of the long table,

his head luminous as a light bulb with his idea of being God,

his long goddish hair tossing during the blessing.

There was rush-hour traffic of holiness around his head.

If I played God, I would play him wearing a mouse’s head.

I would play him as a girl, running upstairs on all pink fours.

When I lay myself down to sleep, now,

I pray I will dream of kindness given and received,

I pray to the coils and meats of my brain

to be healed of my disbelief in my average goodness.

339th Morning of My Easy Quarantine

This morning when I woke up I had nothing,

or I felt I had nothing, but I had something—

a hangover, a lot of little somethings

like neck-ticks dispersed throughout my body,

and some gravitons too, which have risen into my flesh

and are pulling me down toward the ground—eventually into it.

I know someone important said there was not any nothing,

that a vacuum does not exist,

but when I read the arguments for and against

I could not tell which was for and which against.

There is a mush on the pond where snow and ice are

melting,

there is no glimmer, but a gray blur,

a little yellow-blue, a little yellow-pink—like mother-of-pearl

with no glaze, no gleam, just some smudge, some scrawl,

rifts opening in the slush.

If I were closer to it, I could hear it,

murmur of departure from frozenness,

sizzle of stacks of melt.

You might have thought that I was going to yodel something about my interest in dulling my perceptions,

something about drying up the rich breasts of my description, but I am not—

though I would be talking about myself, you are used to that from me.

My passport has been the Chardonnay label on the bottle,

its contents have been the loop-de-loop of my fun-fair ride.

I used to think I would never throw myself away.

When I stare at the slope of snow long enough

and close my eyes, inside them I see a blazing green sphere.

When I open them again I see bright thaw-water rippling over the dam, I see

nothing false, nothing valueless.

X-Ray & Rats

When the X-ray of my hand came up,

sudden and skinny-boned, on the screen,

I said, through my mask, “It’s—my mom’s hand,”

spidery and skeletal, I saw

the mass of my big hand, around it, my

mom’s little metaphysical

carpals packed in the mitt of my big-girl flesh.

I’m not going to wonder whose breast-milk

was richer—I was touched to see

the archeology of my maternal

competence. And my thumb wasn’t broken, just

compromised by bruising,

inspired into crisper arthritisness, I went

out on the street as if with my hand

in my mother’s. And next to the curb was a rat—

a giant, my head at the height of its thick