I believe, please help my unbelief.
I will be the pinky sworn
lie to never leave. I will be
the bravest whisper in a winter-cowled dark,
when chattering teeth are symptoms
of blood’s relief from coral fluted fingers,
the fading Floridian expanse of your palms.
Listen—the coyotes’ novena layers, as lacey
as our capillaries shawl each long bone,
the wet weight of the heart. Will our blood
course warmly, always. Can you
tell me. Will you swear it.
The Sicilian pears freckle sweet on the counter.
My love, January I promise
must return like a grandfather’s ghost
at the coat closet, or in the garden,
polishing the string beans’
green lengths with vesper. Do you see.
To deny the fishes’ their anger,
amazed in thick white ice, is to extinguish
the pilot light, a singular blue petal,
a parable in the old stove’s lung. Tell me.
Tell me wind and shore
are little sisters tugging opposite
corners of a shared night-sparked sea;
what feeds the ocean can be water poured
by inglorious hands, I promise.
Mercy for the field butcher.
Take this bee in your mouth
like a lozenge; take
the plane tree’s storied height to shred,
boil, press into lined paper, and what’s left
take for the okra bed’s mulch;
take the wool from the bleating
lambs as if scooping cream from the smallest
bowl of fresh milk on the sill.
From the kitchen take cutlery, smith
a key for the landlocked road, circling
and circling a lake; take the rabbit’s ears,
the March silk in your left hand—take a breath,
yes, it’s really dead—even though its round,
candied eye is watching, even though in your dream
it blinks, panicked on cedar block
to let you know, or in disbelief
of the long day’s flesh-dulled blade; take
tongues deftly from the calves’ dark-lipped
mouths, dark as the glass born hot, black
from the compulsions of lava to feel
the swell and heave of a rabid sea.
