Undeniably So

Undeniably So

It was a small man, who said,
“She wants to be dead
for attention purposes only.”

He doesn’t bleed the color of ruby
and his ovaries are misplaced.

Bless him while striking his mother blue.
Slap her hard like a new calf born
here, in Limestone,
where nevertheless
there are birthdays when
Christmas is past,
and Winter’s thumb presses hard
its sarcophagus grasp.

Where coyotes ooh and ah
under the sky
as the moon
floats around our back door
calling me like a spotlight.

“Come out,
             come out, wherever you are.”


My sister, who knew enough to have
two recorders removed for high note,
sings (like Glenda) to an answering machine
which minutes all I wish not to hear, while
a calendar boasts a Valentine heart.

“And meet the young lady who
                    fell
                    from
                    a
                    star.”

After forty winters,
forty thumbs,
eighty (times two) doctorates
who scarecrow ballbearing
birds in black suits, I’ll outgrow
red slippers and land somewhere
beyond Fall and Spring.


Even now, the road becomes dark and nature
stops tossing apples, and my sister is three
lollipop dancers and three curly girls
singing my representations.

And I know, as though Summer
switches ovaries to oysters and
all is yellow, and done. Rising
like the sun, I’m destined to plunge

where monkeys bud wings
and doggies play,
          tap tap tap

poppies
   poppies
–forever–