Abortion

Knowing your shoreline
             its auburn thirst

creatures inside sing
             one has black hair

our legs are gnarled
             behind the mirror

raging with a mountain of birds
             the song plays

but now the bloodhound
             of your heart starves

and wants to get married
             and buy appliances

as the world unto our home
             spreads our grease our pudding

to red hills where loss is

•

There are few scars
             a slight tremor

a Chinese girl taken out to the forest
             who thought she saw God in the exhaust

it is the full gallop of foam
             fallen like a cake

but it is her—half eaten
             as a man peels off green gloves

meanwhile a woman opens
             zinnias with full pods sucking

the springhead of muscles

•

Your heat is a shape of a fish—
             pulpy and ecclesiastical

faint hairs on the shape
             like a chain the color of soap

I watched you
             take off your shirt

as the lamp grew on the walls
             do you think about holding

it and your hands gasp for air
             they are precise witnesses

there is a seed in you
             olive of light

sucking the edges
             in the throes of your magenta

I woke from a long thing
             sleeping smell

and you thin as a bean
             said my nipples

saucers spilling dark—

“Abortion” first appeared in River City, Winter 2003, Vol. 23 No. 1.