no more than a walnut shell missing
its tumor of a brain,
like old alarm clocks that refuse to
surrender their tickings,
but ring at all the wrong hours,
i dream that i’ve left the baby at
the park.
the homeless men raise her as their
own.
that shivering girl on every subway
platform,
draped in borrowed men’s coats,
swaddled, swathed, and
trailing like lazarus floating from
his tomb.
that girl fit in your pocket,
velvet and born already worn around
the edges,
a pale moth who should have shone
banner-bright.
child who stays
inside for fear of geese and lumps,
trapped inside a linen womb.
prophesy written on the wall
of a mother’s ear canal:
the seams are splitting toward
the golden of april
the golden of april
when i am the prophet.
visions.
trances.
cherubim.
like the men in italy who steer
boats with sticks, and their
stargazers
who float. the gondolier:
“sometimes i look at my wife and
say,
‘darling, speak to me of love!’
she stammers, as though she were
surprised.”
things are growing. each day lends
itself to the egg,
cells tear themselves to shreds, and
their splitting makes the new thing:
infant spring.
lilac newborn,
i look through your translucent skin
to a lavender mind. it ticks with
the seconds.
you dream of the opera, and may’s
birthday, when
the factory’s assembly lines roll,
cranking out crates of clay peacocks
dressed in buttons
and beads of gold-flecked glass.
cats’ january coats drift away like
cottonwood,
sisters visit and the ducks come
home.
