My Body Remembers
after Body, Remember by Kim Moore
the piecemeal treatment
you received from shaved raw throated juniors
who didn’t know the currency of you,
who preambled over your hummable pain.
And the nights were a pillow talk of thistles
pricking memories clean from my head
and replacing them with a stark enchantment
of suckling hobgoblins within the hollow
lineaments. And you remember, don’t you,
that you are you? An untidy revenant
puzzling over pregnant questions the songbook
of doctors ask you. You slowly emerged
from the cold murk, your brain excused itself
for its faux pas, but you were not quite you,
another regeneration of the Doctor I’ll have to learn
to be a version of me again.
The little winds imitate your voice knowing
it could happen again.
O body, let me remember you are mine.
Vignettes of my Garden
1.
The backdoors open onto a fallen Oz,
a Depression era museum
with rusty bin for cremating sticks
laying upturned, revealing the ear
of a hole, open like a scripture.
2.
You say you’re going to use that disassembled
cage of pallets that make the air taste
like an attic. I’ve yet to see them move,
like an army with a nervous General.
3.
The deconstructed tree
that used to scratch
up to needle rings of clouds,
stuffed with pearls
of rain, now a broken necklace
of browns and reds.
Grant Tarbard is the author of ‘Rosary of Ghosts’ (Indigo Dreams). His new collection ‘dog’ (Gatehouse Press) will be out this year.
The Kindling 