sliver

The girl with the crooked leg and the boy with the hands of a man sat under gray t-shirts and sky on a park bench fading. They might have kissed but sat silent instead giving up
the sun.

She liked to sit.

She wasn't crippled when she sat when she sat she
forgot the father-shaped
break
in the bone and how (she knew now)
because he was a coward the break
stayed
and she grew
around
it
and the
snap
of that night and the rhythm
of each
day as she
drug
the foot and
swung
it around with her
round
hip
to hold her
weight
until the strong leg stepped
up to drag
it
again.

"You see that?" He set one of his hands on the leg.

"What?"

"It's crooked," he said.

She felt gravity take her and she could not
recoil.

"The bench. It's crooked."

"No that's just my . . . "

"I think the whole world is crooked," he said. "If the world was right, you'd be walkin' up straight and you'd see how crooked everyone else is."

It was only a sliver, he thought as the last slice of sun
fell.

They sat in silence with his man's hand on the leg until the sliver appeared at the other edge of the world again. She liked to sit.

the wire

and then there
was
one
day
the
unwinding
of the scarf
from the neck
its
dropping
and the
walking
away
and its
being
lifted
by the breeze
I could not feel
its
lifting
like a bright bundle
of kites
a bevy
of blackbirds
grown tired
of the wire

be

after all

thin
now
and transparent
like
soap

somewhere
something
must be
clean

and

down
now
in a
pipe's
bent
darkness

something
must

be

(untitled)

the way
as if
off
a
ledge
you talk
down
the sun

the way
safe
under the
arc
of
your
tongue
I
shed
my
skin

and then

the way
dissolving
into
dark
like sugar
in
warm
tea
your voice
I
drink it
down
to
sleep

the way
it
steeps
in me
and
will not
sep-
arate

harvest

it's darker in the parson's house where the little girl with hair the color of a harvest lays in a straight and narrow bed with wide eyes straining moonlight

filtered

"Tony . . ."
she sifts
her brother's
name
through
white-washed
air

"yeah"

"did you sin today?"

"prob'ly"

her
freckled brow furrow-
ing her
small thumb itch-
ing her
birthmark her
palms press-
ing together her
pink tongue
pierced
with
prayer her

dear God if I sinned today

they pulse
the veins
in her
temples

please forgive me

her
temples

and if I die in my sleep
if I

die

***

freckles
dissolve and
dark filters
clog palms
re-read thumbs
oppose tongues
turn silver and silent birthmarks
fade and veins
and temples temple
veins
petrify
and
thank god

thank
god
souls

keep