On Divorce I

on divorce I

The cost, a few miracles, a few fires in the inner ear. A few thighs
full of dreams and dreams full of bankruptcy. A few nights beneath lies.

The point is, he lost them all and her and the brown bread
from a can and could still paint its raisins with the charred tip of his bone.

To hold trial now, this isn’t about that is it, is it, is it.
This trance this black of burnt bone and flayed flesh, this blanched care.

I wanted you for the sharpness of your elbows and the arch
of your eyebrows and the click of the safety coming off your gun. And no

I am not speaking in metaphors anymore.

You wanted me for the automatic weaponry of my teeth
for the way they gnashed for the saliva glaze of my lips and the way it dulled

like barrel-aged whiskey from the Japanese monastery
that burned in the glory of the rising sun and vaporized, floating as mist over

the sins of the father. Now we are just falling down hill,
hand over limb over hand over foot and I am no longer tied to my face.

If you want to know, the story about him was an allegory.
It was not meant to rock you to sleep in its large sagging embrace. It was

meant to break over your head like the last arrow that wasn’t shot
because the bow had broken. Its ends are sharp and sharded and

should leave scars below your eyes to remind you when you
look in the mirror that everything loses its function, that your teeth might

as well be beads around the neck of misfortune for all the good
they’ll do you when they go marching out of your mouth like

little frozen angels.

***

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