If We Are Pretty Ghosts. Hammered In

Someone types columns of numbers
on acid-free paper, boils grain
into porridge, reads
shipwreck stories, spackles
holes, spreads butter
on really thin bread. Someone
kneels. Has lost something.
Is asking, hands
soldered together,
his lover's body
dissolved like locusts
from God's mouth,
day an animal
snouted by wolves.
Nudged then torn. Magnificent
desolation, he says,
go away.
I will give you thirty
rubies, will
max out my credit cards, if.
Grief, you have no
feet to enter
my house. But grief
does. Disguised
as grace. His
neck hurts from typing.
The lack of proper insulation
promotes early winter colds,
or so his lover
always said.
Plums in a bowl:
table. Apples
in a bowl: sideboard.
Have you ever
hid from your kitchen. Eating
has a depth of hurt.
Don't mothers feed babies
from their mouths
sometimes. Where's the arseniced
oil. Where's
the wormwood. His thoughts
scatter into
corners. Would he had a goat
to slice open.
He'd rent a pickup, haul
a boulder
down off the mountain,
rope the horned bleating quadruped
to that big slab.
Buyer beware,
he says to the ringing phone.
You may be stricken just by listening.
Meantime rivers
release their ice.
He blows his nose.
He thinks of stapling flyers
to telephone poles:
Come to my goat massacre.
We'll lick the fat
off our hands. We'll wail
from housetops. We'll
landmark this
spot: here his
beloved ghosted
upward, or so
it's said. Here
he refused to wash
anymore. Here spit
was the fluid
of non-retribution.
Wings piss him off.
Drowsiness feels
like fate. What do you
seek, says day.
Aren't I
candled enough,
he thinks, pink
insides so transparent
he can't go out for fear
old women will keel over
at the sight,
a spindle
through his middle
around which winds
nothing but time,
time and empty clone
of time.
What do you wish,
says day. Put him
on the back of my eyelids,
he says,
then leave me alone.

Copyright © 2006 Kerri Webster All rights reserved
from Crazyhorse
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission