Horse Head

The boney cluster
of thought revoked
its
one-time
story: This is who I am…
it’s nothing but bias.

This was born when I was born.

The car screamed underneath
lights
and my mother
put her two feet
in the air
(only one of them socked)
and the sound of something breaking
came through in

1982.

Still going, my thoughts have become
good pets.

Pets in all
the
typical meanings
of that word.

The crazy ward sleeps
beneath me
upon pillows of dust;

the lobster of marriage
turns
hemorrhage-red
in the possibility of time’s passage;

donkeys ride out blizzards
on the backs of their whip-tongue masters;

pathogens are added, finally,
to lists.

my mother grows no more

the body stopped

the singular face is not a face any more
it is hundreds of faces
it is a whole life of people,

stars wane

still

a whitish guild
in the air

Magnificent and heavy as the wheelbarrow
urn,

she has slid
now
into time