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We spread. Kneel. We’ll come out missing parts. This we know.

One said she heard the jazz-band sob when the little dawn was grey.

My mother and I remained apart. My father came late to the party.

She began to see the word, or traces of it, wherever she went.

He came into town with his big red pen and began revising us.

Ajax killed men and then animals thinking they were men.

I waited and waited, rethinking first sentences in my sleep.

Bees kill wasps by gathering around and tightening in the middle.

I could go in for some pie why the hell not, there’s so little time.

Sixty-year-old veins look like giant roots breaking through earth’s skin.

Love speaks in silence, on behalf of lovers too tired for words.

I’m recalling his socks, the inked initials, the splashes of blood.

A memory in the drip, drip, drip of the kitchen sink that won’t stop.

On a morning in November words appeared at the end of my pen.

Flesh is temporary, memory a tilting barn dismantled nail by nail.

Think how you move, how a room changes with your smallest breath.

Salt provokes, tenderizes. Your wounds, your dinner.

My soul is simple; it doesn’t think. Something strange paces there now.

She commands, under her breath, You must be the son.

A goddess was offended; her altar required my virgin blood.

But too much rain can translate anything to unspeakable.

My lust works like the tides pulling in reverse, controlled by a simple ballast.

The poem I can’t yet write saves itself for when it can’t be avoided.

David Lee

Beyond her ampleness, he stands a small man vanquished.

My mother is queen of buttons. She shows off the prized ones.

All right. We are perfect. Tomorrow we will make a million dollars.

I tell my sister what I didn’t tell my father, I love you. Please, don’t die.