Take it out on the rain. I will never again fit all my flowers in here
with the fig butter, and the pomegranate slab
cut two by two in my hands.

Must I hold all the gods up?
With a spindle arm, dressing gown snagged the nail
the nightly chords bouncing to-and-fro along the train rail
running through my grandmother’s house
the squirrels who gleefully spilled out the walls
whenever the dawn-wine foisted us.

You, curled as a conch shell, ironing the nibbled edges
I took down the curtains and their rods.
“Let the splinter in.” I woozed, “Let it all drown.”
The black dog takes his time making his way to my bed.

You’ll open the door for him. You’ll let him in.
You’ll let him in, won’t you? Won’t you? Won’t you let him in?

Let him in. My life is seeds from half-eaten fruit,
and the badgering chorus barks and thunders
with needles drawn at the ready, orange hats
prostrated to the chests of the drained vials hungry.

Tell my mother I loved her. Tell my father I knew him well.
Tell my siblings to bank hard when the frothing wave inevitably sails
to their mouths.

They’ll breathe me in, and taste death
till it dribbles their clutched chins, and I’ll come up the mountain
carrying husks dried, rivers frozen, larva denied
in the belly muck, where the devils danced in me on winter’s coil
blackness slung over the mound of the abiding reaper’s old pickup.