& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff

he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.

Memento Mori

A virus threads its way through us, rides our blood

like a subway, erasing everything. But it’s

alright, I don’t want to remember floorplans or

thresholds anyway, the light

finding the airspace around my mother’s door,

the black air filling her lungs

until all inside her

hangs darkly. I left the attic

unlatched, shimmied up the gutterpipe, I knew

I’d never wake her, no matter how hard I

knocked.

She opened herself like a time-lapsed rose. I thought

our bodies were mostly water

but there was so much blood. I rinsed the rags

in the sink & she whirlpooled

away, below my feet, filling sewers,

so much flowing from that moment, that

Atlantic.

All the payphones hang stuffed with quarters,

the map has been folded too many times.

I’m sick of God & his teaspoons. I don’t want

to remember her

reaching up for a kiss, or the television

pouring its blue bodies into her bedroom.

I’d stare at the dust lit up by the sun,

it formed fallen pillars

connecting the windows to the floor & I knew

they were all that kept the walls

from collapse.

Flood

The earth smells like whatever drifts past—

a moment ago, black apples, now

sheep, legs turned to the sky, as if the world

had been turned over & it was me

hanging underwater. I’ve moved upstairs. Next it’ll be

the attic, then out

onto the roof. In grade school I heard

clouds could weigh three tons & I wondered

why they didn’t all just fall to the ground. Lately

I study rain, each drop shaped

like a comet, ten million of them, as if a galaxy

had exploded above us. The water now

waits to re-enter heaven, waits in my

kitchen, fattening phonebooks, bleeding

family photographs. Yesterday

the river broke its banks

& flooded the cemetery, washing away

topsoil, collapsing tombstones. It lifted

the caskets from their graves,

left someone’s mother in a tree, delivered a stillborn

to the wrong family. Ten strangers

floated into the parking lot & lined their caskets up

as though anxious for the ruined market

to open. I filled sandbags, bought

another pump, read a manual on lifesaving—the trick:

hang lifelessly & breathe only air.

Flashback

Erupting is simply what volcanoes do.

—Heinz Pagels

I imagine I just barely escaped, repeat,

barely… escaped

but, more & more lately, it isn’t clear

from what. The house, as

unlikely as it seems,

still stands, though no one inside

remembers me. In my memory it is always raining,

& when it rains

the water rises in the crawlspace

& threatens the furnace

which cost eighteen hundred dollars

new. The plumber’s name penciled on

the unpainted plaster, the phone

screwed to the wall, John

smashes it up in another flashback,