[to hooligan]

Don't hate your hands, hooligan--

small sousaphones
large moths
gyroscopes

Don't hate your profession, wrecking ball--

getaway driver
guerilla anarchist
Tallahassee's accountant

of the year. Don't hate the world
(when it asks you politely
like a child)

why do your hands spin so fast?

Nana Eating Roses in the Hospital

"i have to go home to Mother.
i have the bread she wanted. it's stale as a grandfather clock
but what do we care?"

she’s not with us. shaking
like suicidal petals in strong wind
she fetches the bread; gets
on the train to Yosemite; meets
my grandfather; gives
him ultimatums about living in the West,
converting.

and I have blinked twice,
she is off again
substitute-teaching supported by
unlit cigarettes and Sicilian squinting—

making star pasta for grandchildren
tugging at her lemon apron--

what are these words shaping in her mouth
but not emerging?

i lean over the disposable bed
to give her our name to inhale
she bites
because time is fragile and she is not.

a moment ago she wrapped herself in her mother's skirt
turned when boys called "hey giraffe!" on the schoolyard
(the long walk home)

in this white room with sterile tile
and MRSA swept in the corner
and bed rails, and kidney pans
she eats roses
blooming with time.

Childhood

we were carving away.

quick jabs into Ivory soap
small hands on plastic knives--
we whittled till the bubbles, set free,
surrounded us. the
white slivers smelled like morning.

left with a fragile boat
or wolf
or house
we kept carving, into other things
smaller and smaller each time
like personalities tried on before moving.

stoves burn,
beds break,
plants poison.
pillows suffocate, and
children fall
slivers to the cold tile
and earn scars learning the intimate
dimensions of pain;
of layers carved away.

each accommodated and filed properly
another fear or hate.

my sister next to me on the cold bathroom floor
finished and looked down at me
--our haphazard carvings like a hair salon--
and we pressed the pieces into the shape of our hands
because something there was missing.

and maybe we knew then—

growing up is not a growing but a carving away.

Returning

This river runs over concrete.
the land never knows where its water is till
the forgiving sea claims its daughter.
until then,
like a creature trapped under ice,
the land feels for it,
a pressure,
a weight of birds and trash
won at dawn or dusk
when sun like a magic trick turns
dark water to mirror, slick and broken
with floating objects.

This river is a city river, breathing death in
regretfully--
still, when it floods the egrets come.
tall, princely things with
awkward legs they keep a secret
until moving, when they extricate each toe by toe
slowly disdaining everything.
and at sunsets the sandpipers come
shadow puppets filling the emptiness
of the concrete slopes, horribly
whole and permanent.
and always the small birds come
and go, taking sewage fibers home
in their beaks to craft a homely nest, and
the fetid algae sinks quietly into itself, and becomes
limp hands.

In My Hands

In my hands napkins become wretched things
Clenched thoughtlessly into balls, worn into shreds
In my hands pens that click
Become disasters, while important papers become ragged;
Gnawed.
Wet glasses sing, and candle wax
always cools in the shape of my slightly burned fingers.
In my restless hands, whole things
Are made part.
In a prison cell I might scrape the iron bars with ever-sharper nails
And when I had made a feasible escape
Sit there dumbly. Worrying
The thin blanket between my hands.
A contiguous rosary.

These hands are lost
being hands.
They were meant to be hummingbirds or other
Winged things.
That could fight air when troubled
(instead of each other.)

And so I write, and the hummingbirds
Settle into silence.