Hollow and Boil Down

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Frontier Poetry, January 2018

Hollow

My secrets are the bones

of broken birds waiting

beneath a white pine. I knelt

until my knees ached,

plucked one by one

from dust: small skulls,

femurs, rib cages,

ilia like miniature crescent

moons. I nestled them in my

pocket, allowed them

to remain through chores,

through dinner. A sweet weight

against my thigh. Her hands

in the same place years

later in the closet of the church

basement. Breath into breath. Breast

against breast among communion

wafers and Lysol. The rhythm

of worshipers wrapping our bodies

like I folded those secret

bones in cotton squares stolen

from my mother. The ceremony

of closing corners over white,

bending soft around rigid

tibia, vertebrae, femur,

keel. For years they lay

under my bed in a cigar box

I opened in silence to examine

the scaffolding of short

lives, fractured

frames of what was possible:

early morning song, wind lifting light

feathers, warm as her words in my hair,

her fingers roaming

my ribs brushing against

my shoulder blades,

the whisper of almost wings.

Boil Down

Dirtied rivers circling

my mouth, tiny bones under

my bed. I abused the neighbor’s

dog once, just for a moment. Who’s

in charge now? Filled

with the Holy Spirit. A stranger

on a bus reaching around

the stranger between us, a hand on

the back of my neck. Campfire

in my lungs, mothball in

my mouth. The scar

on my back numb

in the very worst way. An older boy holding me

down, dropping bits of chewed apple

in my mouth. Collapsed-weeping

in the clean shower water

again. What’s another word

for weeping? A robin bashing her body

against my window. Your finger

on my lips in the Sunday

school room. This blood seeping

through my light green jeans. Jesus

on the wall of our church hungry

as the deer too weak to carry herself off

Snow Road. My family following

in the van slowly, slowly, no one

saying a word.