conduction mother

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conduction mother


croaked a hundred piglet voices
to the sallow, scorched sow in mine.

born unlike and given by nightfalls,
a lone electric wire sparked a blip I saw
in mopping liquid on course for certain boom.

(waxing mythologically,
but have we any new opinion?)

they alert on me this morning,
I thought I’d lost their chase,
but here they croak, fanatical,
disrobing in my ears.

the wages of fear on occasion amount to very brief
hollers in the heart and little more. dear patron saints,

make passes at parenthood;
no guiding arm enfurls me -
my shoulders, they are bare.

they croak at night sometimes,
drawing motherly concern,
addressing me by regnal name.

I’ve hated the freckled skin for long. 
I used to try at dots with an eraserhead, 
but all the methods mad me only mader; 
the paint I mark inquires commitment - 
maintenance is a permanence.

the foggy path croaks me farther on,
to legacy and latitude with humankind.

call again. prone scars I won’t explain,
croak and croak for nightfall’s blanket
background, I’m nothing like a violence.

luckily or maybe not, the electric peril did not gesture
and the kittens weren’t the wiser, even laughing still.

(a poem is a thing that self-destructs;
here I go, fleeing from it.)



[8/17/18...]