Two Poems

Elopement, 1982

A cabin grafted to the dark. Inside,

my parents sleep, gold-banded. Others—

sisters, nephews, the mounted marlin—

asleep or kept awake by the electric fan’s moth-

beat tremor, the insistence of mint indoors.

My brother—kernelled—missing button—

sleeps in womb mutter. My mother urged into

this twice-body; my father beside her,

obliging her slow-rising doubleness.

The night-gnaw of carpenter ants, crumb-coloured

insects living short lives and appetites

for wood and blood, needs older than marriage. The stars

a high pitched gleam, shine so hard they can hear them.

They won’t survive. Or no, maybe rain.

Yes, it was raining and rain hit the tin awning.

This Diner, This Slant

We count the good men like silverware, with the minnow flash

of knives. Whatever happened to the one I followed on the barge,

almost twenty-one, naked feet hacked open on hot stone?

Surely, the waitress has followed someone until

her legs were crop; surely, our mothers followed our fathers

because now here we are, in this diner, this slant. And we talk

about how long we want our hair to grow we talk about

mechanical heart valves we talk about how suburbia is melting,

a run-on sentence. These are not the homes of our fathers.

From light, to ground, to bread, we guess which plot of land is next.