of their color, one strand at a time—

I think of how, after rain, ants get into the house,

how I first notice one or two veering toward

the dish sponge, then several behind the toaster

until I find a long line of them seething up

the pantry wall, pulsing on a jar lid, frantic

to get at the honey. What happens to

the sweet cave of the mouth, I don’t want to see that.

Mottled roots of the cuspids exposed, the pocked

molars coming loose—lately I can’t help noticing

how tired I look in the mornings, how ready

to return to the bed I’ve just risen from.

I make myself get dressed, I stand up and feel it

coming from beneath the earth, from the hulls

of their ribs and their weedy skulls, up through

the basement, the mildew and silverfish,

working steadily and humming, happy,

in love with its job of building an old woman.

Fever Blues

FEVER BLUES

Maybe because I feel so dull and sick today,

the dozen harmonicas on my dresser,

snug in their gray plastic cases,

the lids popped open,

seem to me like little caskets I must caretake

before the arrival of the mourners—

a family named Hohner

which has suffered a grievous loss.

How similar death makes them—

the libidinous G, the guileless C,

even the strange D-flat.

They are tarnished where my lips

touched them, they have sung

while handling the snakes of sorrow,

happiness has knocked them down like a fit.

Now they are as quiet as unhitched boxcars

strewn in a train yard outside Chicago.

I’ve got the blues for everyone

who has to lie down like the dead all day,

far from the juke joint of health,

blues for the falling night

and the sheets wrung out from cancer, or fever,

the moonlit harps a flotilla

waiting to take us down to the mouth of the river.

Washing

WASHING

I haul my mother up from the tub,

my dripping, naked, trembling mother,

and help her onto the toilet lid where I used to sit

as a child, keeping her company

while she bathed, the delicate steam rising,

her breasts falling to each side,

the thick blonde hairs on her pubis

drifting like eelgrass, her belly as milky

as the swirls of soap on the surface of the water.

I sit her down and wrap her in a towel

and kneel to clip the curled yellow toenails,

taking each foot in my hands,

trying to be gentle, trying to be more merciful

than God, who after creating her

licked her clean with a rough tongue before

leaving her to her life, to suffering, and to me.

THREE

THREE

It

IT

I can still remember that sensation of being shaken

by something that gripped me and wouldn’t let go

until my daughter was born, sliding toward the blanket

spread on the floor where I squatted,

the doctor squatting, too, waiting to catch her,