If we are made up of our losses
Then we are as thin as Kleenex
Living in hope for the dead
Our breath unable to rest in

Our lungs search for solace in the new suburbia
We shovel; we sow
Our lawns so expertly mowed
We are the post-modern somnambulists
Shopping for God and the perfect diet

And you souls in Purgatory
Have you any insight for us sinners
Who have the sons and daughters to prove it?

Oh Mother of Jesus you crazy so-and-so
Is this what you imagined it would come to
When you slapped your insubordinate son
What does resurrection matter when the dead lie in our arms?

All beyond the presence of our fingertips

This ringing in my ears points to an historical deafness
By which I forget the tights I endured as a child with crotch permanently anchored midway between thigh and kneecap
Their unforgiving synthetic itch
Coupled with frigid winter air penetrating thin, scarred fabric
Such were the requirements of gender and formality during annual ecclesiastical events including the return of Santa and funerary Friday also referred to as good
Such unhappiness was present in my legs
Such a desire to be liberated
By cotton or love
It’s a fact that I’m taken by boyish charm
As embodied by her in my bed wearing a trucker’s hat and g string

#2
The heavy lashes that shadowed her cheeks flew up

All of this worn-out irony; these fluttering lashes and hurt feelings
We hold on for so little
Overlook grammatical errors and other fatal flaws
Your Oedipal heart murmur for instance
Our murderous yearning for redemptive and declarative statements
I have been privy to ponderous lies
Delivered like dessert gobbled up and giggled over
Kissy kissy
I understand there is no shame in hurt feelings
No romance
Just inflammation

when we were kids posed on the brown couch
first sullen
then defiant
our weeks were marked by Bugs Bunny
Hockey Night in Canada
Sunday mass
and fried Spam
age was still waiting to come as a surprise

there’s no point in blaming the obedient doctor
or the vigorous catholic
for our introduction to the corporeal
let’s face it, we took to the word slut like flies to honey
we were such valorous drunks
reckless
romantic
and ready for a fight

we didn’t have time to imagine this eternal year
when death would arrive with a flourish

My youth continues to disrupt the orderly progress of something, maybe
The forgetting of the girls I passed over in order to maintain my mother’s sanction:
The gas jockey
The hippie
The fat one
And now in blistering mid-life
I worry the opportunities of my youth have passed
And fuss over my girth
Of course I can live without love, I am my mother’s daughter

I was as green as that river before Cartier and I’m as polluted as its banks now
Unable to express the immense satisfaction I feel in your presence
Watch carefully for the lift of my eye
Don’t think I didn’t notice the cuff links

I am standing on the edge
Near a reckless current
Wishing I were a stronger swimmer
That I had a secret store of power that would carry me upstream
Through this rush of fear and desire

fuck you
and everyone who said you didn’t

all that venomous hope
and gossip
and now
all this vodka
this unfinished business

you did this
but something else too
you have been unspeakable
but we got somewhere didn’t we

I want to ask you why
but it’s so cliché and we both know you wouldn’t have the words

At any rate, I was the life of the party
I thought I had some good ideas about that straight chick
Drink had shut down the mute button
And in her straight-legged jeans she called to mind your hips
In a flat-footed dash
When you were always in a race with yourself

Driving out of the mountains
Purified by humiliation
I was struck again by your intractability
And all your talk about surviving Armageddon
How you held the babies during take-off
How you survived a litany of affliction
Convinced me that your peculiar form of punishment would be to live forever

On television the dead are so full of life
but you, cold, odd and stuffed into a box, were not
you, in the condition and quality of being deceased, were barely recognizable
the right size but the wrong shape

Today I loaded your boxes into the car
the material verification that you were walking and breathing
that you fought and lied and
that you hated yourself with such a vehemence

This stuff of your life has left me weak with disappointment
now it will become the good bargain of someone else’s good day
I am keeping your hair cream

Everything you never told me
Everything I never asked

A dog day
Eats escape
The only thing ever trusted
I know this dream
I suppose I just think
That maybe this anger
This anger would keep better in a jar
This anger followed by ellipses
This moment of longing
This moment of wanting to believe in the resurrection

I wonder about you &
What you think I should do next
Might the frame of a house
Might the young garden
Might the mountain picnic
Illuminate the distance that swiftly goes?