Prettiest Wishes
from Passenger Traveller, page 56
with Charles Hood
ISBN 0-9674900-5-7
Petaluma, 2000
$8
Grandfather Stalin,
what contains an essence?
The curve of a cheekbone or an eyebrow,
the faces in my sky which bear the
plum stars as eyes?
Will I ever get used to the shapes I occupy?
Where does the void we feel come from?
I shattered once on a welcome home and
cannot paste it;
I who waitress progerian dreams and oil spills,
trying to collect essences to fill the hole.
The thin-skulled, thick-hearted continuum of need:
lying in a heap of severed arms to be held,
rolling through piles of amputated penises to
absorb the masculinity.
In a wasted dream, Grandfather,
I saw the beginnings of the white hair which
grows back after a branding,
I who learned love means giving up self,
inventing safety, my firstborn,
like the wrinkled hatred in a grandfather’s foreskin.
The faces in my sky,
parents staring down with eyes like blowholes,
lips tight,
pale from the weight of their pasts in their rectums.
Where does the void we feel come from?
The thick-skulled, thin-skinned continuum of need?
I fell from a powerline into my own
out-stretched hand,
as big as God’s hair,
crashing from one kind of search to another. So
prettiest wishes hunters and collectors,
addicts and rippers.
All my love.