Last Words

Last Words

The way the mouth might hold jagged gags,

word-stones of broken teeth sucked against the gum

and always bloody always sharp. 

The way, when the news arrives, the tongue has to find

something else to do.  It’s a caught and blunted,

stripped bud bear, bolted short chained to the post and

                        the way the claws are hauled

                        out one by one then cauterized

                        by hot drops of ore

The way such ore is poured into

her unscrupulous crucible, but makes a graceful wisp

of a crack that years ahead of now will be black, still black

on a lavender background…

all day

all day the lake-           ore is smelting:                                                no good news

                                                                                    about your boy

                                                                                    aboard a boat

                                                                                    first one in maybe

                                                                                    and beneath a tarp

                                                                                    with another boy

The way a tongue and gums begin to put on

weight almost without

knowing, as though the only thing

in the room is news

                                                                        gorged to swelling, greedy to telling

                                                                        but listen!

                                                                       

                        it’s quiet, it’s like

                                                this muscle has got so big

                                                                        it’s suffocating everyone.

Like the way, in most Novembers,

the biggest buck would, hung from your tallest

pine, and astride its hide a sign of your boy’s

                                                                        first shot (because the boy

                                                                        squeezed his eyes

                                                                        before he squeezed the trigger…)

Mother.  Don’t remember way your words

were shot as he slammed the door

behind him, buckshot spraying the back of his head

“Get out of here!                     anddon’t                      youever                        comeback!

Don’t imagine the way they were stuck in his skull,

their usual berth, and, though the undertaker

pulled each small rock the sweep and drag rash

imbedded,

the way every foul word you ever spoke

fell into the bucket at the funeral home

was his sifted skull, the cracked bow,

the way each tinked in the tin

of it, the bloody tin tink tink on the bottom

of the tin, in your teeth.

And you grind and grind and grind.  Swallow

and grind.