Every Week He Wants To Be Better

        I'm still erasing the memory of your black tongue,
        the way you thrilled me, off & on,
        leaving me no “if only” I could keep up with.
        Celery talks, but you have to listen so hard
        to hear it will kill you.

Christmas Eve he dreams of things
his mother might have taught him:
but she is stubborn & mute as cheese
before mold grabs hold,
pungency sprung into the air
like a handful of rancid birds
unleashed from a blind of
idiots, or worse . . . here
the sudden champ
on the rind, spitting out the clabber
in his father's foreign basement
with its piles of Look
magazine girls, shoulders
exposed, the sullen hampers
of dirty men's clothes,
the incendiary ripeness
tripping about a VW van
with the friends of a wished-for
brother . . . with the pilot light
back in the stove, he
relishes the menace one
can bring from one's self,
cooks up something slow
& forgets it . . . “Everything's
better a day later” & the whole time
he ladled soup he apologized
to no one there, large-mouthed
hungerings subdued
by fear's hard dominion.