» Poetry

Two Poems

137: An Elegy

I was at their mercy when
I let them pull you away.
People say life or death,
but they do not often mean

what it meant that starless night.
It was Thanksgiving, and there
was so much blood I could not see
ballooning quietly inside.

You likely didn’t feel anything –
I felt it all for you. You likely
did not know what kind of an end
you were coming to. I did

the knowing for both of us.
It should have been like this
forever, at least until you grew:
I’d do these sufferings for you.

There are so many things that do
not exist since that night. Not
just you, but brother, and that part
of my womb I’d walked through

my whole life with, torn
like a murmur in the middle
of the night. When they stopped
that barely heart of yours

to save my life, I think I tried
to do that for you, too –
something about my own heart,
you see, doesn’t beat now either.

I can’t seem to find a way
to count its cadence, to count
anything moving inside
that shows that I’m alive,

the way I was alive before
they brought the scalpel and
the image from the monitor:
the last counted minute of your heart.

Ode to Missing Something You Never Had

Because what is a ghost
if you never knew

its face,

its form?

A woman passing through
stopped me on the side-
walk to ask, What is that tree

with no branches or leaves? 

She’ll never know

what it is, its wild glory

of blossoms.

But not knowing doesn’t mean
it won’t cling to you

in the dusk, follow

you down

the hallway in the middle

of the night, let you see it hiding

in the branch of a frangipani,
in the bend of an isolated road,
in the bureau drawer, crouched,

eyes aglow. How I hold this pain,
manifest it into form until I feel

again the knife’s dive into

my insides

just to know the cleft is still there.