Carmen (in a variation on Heroic Verse): "Begin"
Morning arrives the ghost of a gold dress,
an undulant shading of sun slid through
a lid of grey dilating into blue.
The coffee grinder proceeds to address
the swamps of heaven’s ancestry. It’s blessed
my fingers: one through nine with numbered clues,
unweaving tourniquets from Sudoku.
My mother moves about upstairs to dress
for work, asks if her makeup is a mess.
She layers out her hair in an up do
of bobby pins, prongs from a brassy crew
of unbending angel wishbones. I knew
when I kicked off the sheets, undressed
my lungs with two white cigarettes, and guessed
what I would wear today, that I would do
whatever it is that I need to do;
watch ropes of shower water try to wrest
your mouth and hands from my body, the west
gilding the sun’s dissolve into the blue
burning of night’s exorcism—me, you.
