Black Hole

We are the broken chain of DNA

in a double helix extending

from one end of the universe to the other.

What once was whole now dangles

between planets like a cracked tooth

long ready to be pulled. 

 

(“We don’t want to be corrected,”

we cry; “we want to be erased.”)

 

Why is it that we scream so loudly,

with only the moon to echo our cries?

We don’t belong here, tethered by gravity

to a bruised Earth. We are monsters here;

we are the monsters we hear in the dark.

 

Take a handful of soil and toss it to space;

will that island of life one day house us all?

Or does the soil belong here, with us?

 

This screaming, this tethered existence –

maybe this is simply the life of a seed

waiting to sprout. Alone in the soil,

made for reaching arms and branches.

 

I’ve never been in love. I am a seed

that doesn’t believe in sprouting.

Maybe I am the broken chain of DNA;

maybe, while the world crisscrosses the universe in a grid,

I alone am dangling from the south pole,

aimless, and unfettered, and unconnected.

 

Maybe I am a mystery,

but all mysteries wish to be found out –

if only that didn’t mean ceasing to be.

The War of 1991

A cloud gathers behind the windows, fogging the glass. The glass curves, like an exit lane, but there is no exit. The cloud goes nowhere, degrading into fog. Pressure; building, and building. The atoms excite; heat. The fog is oppressive; the room is a steam engine. Pounding; the atoms push against the window pane, one by one by one. The curvature creaks in complaint against the pressure. A scream of white flags sliver and snake across the pane. There is release.

We creep through the cracks like children let out of school. The air is open. We run through the streets to see every windowsill decorated with broken glass. The barriers between the internal and external are now permeable. We’ve learned to let the open air inside like a lost stray. Century-old portraits on the mantle now weather more rapidly, but the faces look younger.

7:20, PM: a boy sits on the porch with a head cold. As he sits, the fog crawls slowly back through the windows and his eyes grow red. I sit across the street and dully rub my own burning eyes. All down the road, from this coast to the next, we red-eyed youths sit on our porches beside a plastic bag of medicines, unable to sleep because the fog has crept from the window to our beds.

Mural on the Bedroom Ceiling

I’ve dreamt four nights of children,

but the long days teach me to give up

dreams of children, so these three nights

I’ve lain awake.

 

But what am I?

I am a hand resting on a doorknob.

I leave behind traces of oil on the locks I’ve tried

and left behind.

But what am I?

 

I am nothing compared to a child.

Look into my swollen grey eyes and tell me,

 

is there more substance there than in

cheeks rosied with laughter, the face of a baby girl?

Or will that miniscule finger that blesses my face

with its touch one day reach out for locks I’ve tried

and find them broken by a father’s hands?

 

The ceiling is unchanging these three nights, but

on it my eyes have painted scripture and promises;

laughter from lips resembling mine.