Sunday. A steady bell

calls my neighbors from their doors, my father

roused by the faithful.

I could take you to the house I grew out of,

my mother’s name inked

off the bell. Trees push up from below

the trees I remember—a woman paces the kitchen,

a child grows inside her. I put on

my plaid secondhand coat, it holds the shape

of someone who may or may not be dead,

his unreadable name

sewn into the lining. Wind fills the trees above us

with rattlesnakes, as the leaves let go, making room

for more leaves.

Two More Fragments

Fragment #8

I was a mason,

kneeling before an unfinished

wall,

washing brick

with acid. The lime from the mortar

steeled my fingertips

numb—even those nights I

made it home

& held your breasts to my mouth

I was afraid, unsure

where my fingers ended

& you began.

Fragment #9

My Alcatraz. My Titanic.

I sit in my cage, work the button.

Button Man.

let the prisoners in    let the guards out

Tidal, nearly.

If a prisoner escapes

I will have to serve that man’s time.

Lexington Federal. A great ship

in the middle of the prairie.

All around the sea rages.

Curse

Let the willows drop their branches, heavy with ice,

let the sound be a whipcrack across the fields.

Let each tree be felled, let them dynamite the stumps.

From now on you will have to keep moving, from now on

you will carry everything you own.

You will sleep beneath a payphone, dream of a room, a field.

Let the field burn clean, let your children beat the flames

with brooms.

You will feign sleep as the conductor passes.

The names of your children will break up in your mind.

Let the stones jam the plough, let the barn fall.

Let the paint leech into the well.

Man dancing with a paper cup

Don’t you know there ain’t no devil

there’s just God when he’s drunk.

—Tom Waits

You still send letters but I know

you are dead, I see you

wandering the streets when I go back home,

& I swear I am never going back. A glance

in the trash, a barrel on fire, my hands

pass right through you. You wrote

from prison but I couldn’t remember

how you looked

so the bars became cheekbone, shadow,

lash, pressed

tightly to your face. Maybe

the silence you move through

shaped me, the way

a church bell ringing resonates

long after the ear ceases to perceive it,

the way waves space themselves

until they stop.

Prayer

Who are you talking to? she asks, the room empty.

Stylite (fragment #10)

Go into the desert sometime

climb a pole & sit up there

for thirty-eight years or so

until the faithful start to call you a saint.

Spend your days waiting for pilgrims

bearing olives & bread, a jar of water

balanced on a woman’s head

the dipper like the tongue of a forgotten bell.