I am on my knees
in the backyard. He
finds me there, a motor
that won’t turn, a rutter
that won’t spin. He lays his
spider hands on my shoulders,
my anger rises in thick, black columns--
thick, black smoke with eight eyes and
eight legs and four stomachs and eight hearts
and ten horns upon its head. He’s found me --
on my knees. Staring at tree bark and leaves, I --
you stare at my back bleeding and furiously red.
The kingdom has fallen, a giraffe neck now bent over
and broken: legs locked but head on the grass. The air is
thick and black. In front of my knees, there is
a mound of fresh, bleeding earth. The fingers on my
shoulders clench, grippe, spider legs piercing
skin. The eyes on my back bore a hole.
I’m choking, like Henry on a grape,
on the thick, black fury in my throat.
“What are you doing?” he says.
He sits beside me, lying smile,
like it’s going to be okay,
but it never will be.
“I am on my knees,”
I say, “mourning a
fetus in the ground.”