Ten Years On
why will it not work what magic
word made it work
Lincoln in the Bardo
not what shocks me because doesn’t that
change every day like first it’s a run up
the road-bone bone to bone
of my spine after starting grounded
at the toe at the hospital door? whatever it is
I am I sniff it sizzle and I yellow a one second
coward take to root glue to be the rigid thick skin
of the spruce I pass on a walk most days
or maybe maybe her bole bulging now
all these years I’ve known her (is it
painful that bole?) or maybe a me
between that bole her root and trunk and tap
root and canopy or maybe I tip my face to
the ceiling of her low sky like how
my mother, dying
for the last time licked hers while the final husk
of her self a hollowed woman of flacid
muscle and dumb tongue intubated for all those
last days all seventeen nearly three
weeks of those days all the water in her
skin pulled in as if—well it was the valley—
her lips cracked caked it was all around
the tube seeming to suture her mouth
while she in and out in and out was being
breathed not breathing do we know anything
anything at all other than watching
looking off watching looking off
