Mercury

Mercury

Hush-a-bye

These fish that surround me like icons
on the blue battlements,
they are a risk I have never been willing to take.
Gorgeous feathers all look alike to the Jamaican girl there,
carrying a list from her auntie
into a northern climate.

don’t you cry.

One orchid
one jar of Katydids
one broken mirror
two limes
one skull
six periods
two large spiders (male and female).

Go to sleep you little baby.

As a child, I carried fillings of mercury around inside of my head.
Mother would call and call, but I could only hear the train in my ears,
moving down its tunnel of blood toward the dark heart
my father gave me in his pain.

When you wake

I’ll never get used to my orbital lenses where only the center is clear
and everything else falls away.
In the dream my girl was eating chocolates—
no, she was eating the cooked hearts of chickens
one after another.

you will see

The musak beside this escalator is playing a tune the Irish learned from whales
before the great slaughter.
Are these your lamps, O poets, fueled by blubber and blood?

After the priest had finished with her, she went into the garden behind the rectory
and filled her mouth with red clay.

All the pretty little ponies.