Amy McNamara - Poems - Spork Press


	Rage says to dirt: Sequins I stitched into my side with blue-vein thread— Admire them, their capillary flash. Conscience says to dirt: Sorrowful bull, doleful eyes, la fiesta brava, picadors, banderillos— I observe you all. Sad says to dirt: The milk-ring on the desk is an open mouth. It furs with mold. Lust says to dirt: The ripe apricots fall from the trees. Do you envy me my teeth? Worry says to dirt: I sink! I sink! Water pools my eye-sockets. Dream says to dirt: See me held aloft by twelve acrobat bears? They will marry me. Dirt says: Come to me, I’ll cover you.

	Fluent in a fractured language— ulna) tongue slipping up the length of the greasy kitchen knife (bone fractured like a mother tongue, (Bêche- de-Mer—a kitchen table, three splintered legs, a downpour— fluent, gutters release their hoards— (small bones of cottonwoods wave (radius, metacarpal, phalanges sway and rock like (breath one mother swinging by her neck from the cellar joist, another’s endless kitchen (wide lap, open arms—

	I took water to mean mother— cup and saucer for husband and wife, then I took another— I took an iridescent damselfly to mean I’ll have to die, and soon, and still— I took sex to mean I’m alone with a pile of gold and a thin wood door— I took mother to mean hide your heart. I took skin for the language between us, found speed for breath— I took mother to mean your heart is not your own. I took touch for palm, a damp feathered beast, smallish claws— I took mother for Attended, alone, then I took me to mean Zero at the Bone— I went to mother, took mother to mean—