What keeps me coming back to this place
are the frayed nerves under my skull,
the mercury thinness in my veins.
I need to know
how many times
must I watch Eve stroke the hair of Samael
as he weeps into her breast “It’s my fault – forgive me.”
See the moon cupped in the hands of a blind man
with a noose around his neck,
Ophelia standing in the mouth of a giant clam,
her sallow neck draped in pearls.
Watch the mouths of children fill with dead petals
falling from a shattered window of sky,
Little Red Riding Hood broken and naked,
victimized.
How many times
must I find my sister standing
outside our family home,
its skeleton smoldering, her nightgown singed,
her face, eyeless…
The silhouettes of angels making love,
a clown without makeup,
women with sad complexions,
each bearing a different shade of midnight,
a fire-pump that pulses
in place of a heart and lung…
This alley has the same sour drafts
that come from nowhere,
the graffiti and eroded bricks
that all the others have,
but each time I pass it,
I feel as though something’s vanished,
as if a sound had dissolved
a moment before my arrival.
And though my pace quickens
when I approach it, I fear
what I might see
should I arrive
too soon…
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