Pretty wrong, that she was forced to wash, hang, and iron
her brother’s life.  In church, her teeth tingled. Ancients
measured bounty by stringing youth with lead or gold,
their quiet everything. Straying from these hurts, her
thought antlered to a four-pointed idea. One: dwell
in a woe, or forfeit four walls’ benefit. Two: whiskey
leavens. Three: if God is love, are tempests naughty love-talk?
A bumptious start to a bad-ass sail into ontology, she knew.
Four: she baked for buttered night, still thin and fallow.

[FIRST LOVE]
A rooster’s topknot tours the rugged wind. A hound
ripped its face. Inside, some mirrors err. When ceiling
tiles like maps of France dapple silk bed-lace
 
with a water stain’s mock-sweat, who’s the booby?
He’s nuts for you, his warm thin hair
surrounds you like a hoop skirt. He willingly
 
directs harpies to refrigerated trees sloughing
their snow-skin just when they run under,
vile as a dog pack. Each chick winces in the factory
 
when a handler sears its beak, you saw that
documentary. Their hands have to be gentle.

Like a granite island quarried to oblivion,
her husband’s memory chips. Time crawled
with hammer, auger, chisel and maul—handed
Eve a blunt drill bit, broke her old man
to paving stones. Nearly in tune, his jazz
guitar changes chords; that meander
can corrode or flutter hearts.
                                                Men auger
shame from a tin nonentity, pot whistling
to the kettle, naming each ruddy organ
wrong—profound baptism into nights
without work or love’s
leviathan hum.