Mary
It doesn’t matter how I got here
under branch-cracked sky,
how I stood at the iron gate
only long enough to let my fingers
lift the latch from its bed,
only long enough to pass through,
lay the bar back to sleep.
Or that my feet rang
in the night fog, tolling
among headstones.
Your stone hands are smooth as flesh,
white like your face carved from innocence.
The basin of your neck descends from earlobe
to cut of jaw...
I want to devour you with kisses.
But to say this is some kind of asking for forgiveness.
That’s not what I came to ask,
not what I meant to say.
I was lonely up at the house,
pacing from room to room,
wanted a little peace, thought
you’d understand if anyone could.
I’m having a little trouble I
can’t seem to get clear of.
I thought you might help.
Teach me to love like the maple
in my yard, its roots deeply settled.
If I were its buds shattering into the cresting
season, wouldn’t I embody redemption?
Wouldn’t I marry the sun?
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The Doe
After three days on the hunt
he pulls his white pick-up
into the yard. I hear him
from the kitchen,
truck spitting like an old man.
Hear the engine cut,
the door slam.
I finish washing my supper dishes,
dry them,
before I go to the window.
He’s slipped the rope
that binds her back legs
through the barn’s pulley,
has hoisted her off the truck.
Her back arched,
the slit of her belly
opens to him.
Her slender carcass
leaves a brown mark
against the red leaves
of the far hillside.
He lifts her head,
I think he means to kiss
her brown eyes shut,
then strokes the hull of her frame,
walks back to his truck,
starts it up.
At the end of the drive
he turns toward town.
I go to bed.
Late, I hear his belt buckle hit the floor,
springs grate beneath his body.
I turn my weight away
from his whiskey mouth.
When I wake the light dwells
in the bent hay of the uncut field.
His body has managed its way against me.
It feels my stirring
and now has laid me on my back,
his mouth on mine,
stale taste of barley,
the fetor of iron.
Coarse fingers on my breast.
His nails still outlined with her blood.
His other hand enters me,
the blood of the doe has entered me.
I fracture from groin to breast bone.
He fingers my openness, my wound.
I once loved this man.
Outside all that is left of the birds
is the dove’s who who who.
(first appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly)
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