Gena Rowlands’ Red Right Hand
The dark thoughts dense with years.
The light thoughts dense with years.
The indents of the easiness of years making a life
Hard for habit.
Cavitation of the lake pink with regretfulnesses.
Rainfall of spiders. Rainwater of eggs.
The ton shovel
Knotted fantasy hydraulic to its pulley
Line you climb
Into the cabin off of. The mushy foam
Of stuffing seated. Plumb the sun hot,
The sun cold, a sweated hefting of want buttery,
Bone-spat with fastidiousness of wish.
I’ve lent out love enough for the interest to carry.
The load can be held aloft just as long
As I’m a quarry.
The director’s wife’s husband’s friend lit a frame
White as daybed.
I think I could have a kid if it were OK
To smoke a cigarette in wait of her yet.
The Tempest
The apocryphal hides truth
In the drape of the fold
Of its garments, in buttons
Cold makes leprous,
No free hand to hold a coat
Shut. Not Napoleon’s men.
The blight not of black
Magic but idle hand’s slight:
Pitch stain the powder inks.
An enclosure perhaps
Smelt of the son of Sycorax.
I’m too easy to talk of curse.
Language is savior of forms
Unthinkable.
Liquid seeps from a furnace
Cool enough
The rest stays solid. Firm to
Purer word, I’m fickle as tin.
Cold preserves what it degrades.
Do you find this nurturing?
I don’t remember
Being taught that
Shame is love smelted purer.
How can I forget?
The tin pest of love is a wall
Set against another wall.
A thing has changed only if
You remember. I don’t
Want to do anything with it.
What happened to us
In the dark
Happened to us in the light.
Will it forget me?
Was I ever among its notice?
Shame preserves what it degrades
In walls no love can shore up.
***
Author photograph courtesy of Logan Fry
