to breathe water
And behold, there came
a great wind
from the wilderness,
and smote the four
corners of the house,
and it fell
upon the young…and they
are dead
and only I am escaped
alone to tell thee
The Book of Job
1:19
by then it must have
seemed the great god she believed in was dead too, that the big blue skirt of
the sky was lifted in a swift wind and every single light put out when the rain
arrived, even when they try to revive the fire with new fire breathing: a puff a
pinch a lung-full a gallon a gallon but every spark was shuttered out and the
snubs of tallow and their charred limp wicks curled like cripples were swept
into the muck their house had become
sweet jesus seven twos
and sometimes ones and the last in tow: that boat who once was was staging for her great frame a
body now all wobble all wax all melt as if from some sheltered woodlot a man kept cutting
down trees kept sawing them all halfwise quarterwise split then split again
down down her brown brown molasses heart and sent them into a liquid-pitch flame,
and she was bubble rising, like paint in the heat and breaking open and steam, all
that steam, the only only breathing
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