We build the bony cage for all our lives,
The twig-by-twig of robin’s nest in ribs.
The one that I have at the base of my spine,
bird-fragile, nestles in the bowl of my hips.

Here no reverie, no peaceful inclination,
No dignified ascetic’s mindful rest.
Just rattling these bars in self-castigation
Of the prison-home I’ve set within my breast.

And in the dark around me, I hear gnawing:
The ugly wail of metal chains on teeth,
The beastly sound of walled-up creatures clawing
For heat-stroke freedom wavering out of reach.

Come dance with me awhile inside this prison,
And beat your feet down on the bony floor!
Come let them know what strength has now arisen,
And don’t do your jailer’s work for him no more!

In the thrift store, the shelves shine dully with brass,
Old candelabras and cups that could serve in ritual,
If they were not made so poorly and marketed so cheaply.
I first found these thin, yellow, sheet-metal creations
Stacking the shelves in my grandmother’s trailer.
Under the grime, the settled oily sheen of air freshener, there rested
Chalices into which even a king would sneeringly spit the epithet “rococo!”
There must have been a hundred million other such trailers,
A hundred million places of honor for stamped yellow tin.
Why gather them up? Why give them cult?
The entire dragon’s hoard seems now to have found its way to goodwill,
While the real versions of these ghostly trinkets sit heavy upon altars and windowsills.
Volunteers must weigh them, each in hand, and make some distinction:
Did this aid in worship? Was this treasure?
Or was it only treasure enough? Butter-smooth placebo
For those who found themselves in an endless dry spell of weekdays,
Unpunctuated by the sort of holiness that Normal People
Crave and crave and never attain.

I do not want something sweet.
Not just any flower, not just any thorn;
I want things no one can give me,
Not out of love or admiration,
Let alone traded carelessly with cold fingertips!
I ask for easy victories and braided bread,
For cinnamon and oranges;
A piece of fruit, my purple name
Carved bruise-cruel into the flesh.
I want it written in birthday cards
that it grew on the tree that way,
That memories of my eyes and smile
Burned warm within the splitting cells!
And at this late juncture? I barely care if it’s true.

Now, I’m afraid of death.
Was never afraid before, but
Learned the metal taste by comparison with
Honeyed, watery accomplishments, and
Realized I couldn’t bear to die
Like stars died before we charted the sky,
Some soft-bodied nothing passed over, unfossilized…

Grasping wretch, ugly stilt-legged and waving, begging,
Signaling for statues, hallowed trees, and candied fruits…
Well, what can you ask for?
Nothing if, without spoils,
You retire quietly to premature old age,
Some undecorated Cincinnatus wrapping up, for good, in bed.

What ergot prophecies existed in the past
of the coming of dead black suns and starless nights?
Some love affair with tragedy, ten millennia long,
that resulted in us all writing
"kindness and love and rest and holidays" in red ink.
I am tired of saving grains of rice for the world to come,
but the bandages my grandmothers wore around their arms
keep me from putting the *** on to boil.
I have dreams about the future, and only believe the nightmares,
And so I suppose that nothing changed after all.

My father cooked.
My father cooked like cavemen cooked, fire and stone,
Like men in the wild making cacciatore,
Soldiers in a trench chucking a can into the fire,
A party in winter furs eating kidneys raw,
Carved from the back of a beast.

He cooked like people dive into ill-fated romances,
No looks backward and all caution to the wind,
No time even to throw a pinch of salt over one's left shoulder.
Heart broken and fingers burned,
You would learn to love again,
And you would complete the recipe next time,
And it would someday be true love, amazing,
A bite that could sustain long after it was consumed.

My father taught me how to cook.
He taught me by taunting me when I picked too dull a knife,
Without ever showing me how to tell a sharp one.
By screaming at me in impatience when we were a second from crisis,
Without having the foresight to speak softly before danger was nigh.
He taught me the grandeur of making something delicious,
Without extolling the virtue of making it cleanly and safely.
He taught me recklessness,
To risk everything for just one iota of glory,
To act out of insecurity and even suicidality.

"My mother doesn't cook,"
I bragged as a girl.
"You will not find her barefoot and pregnant in a kitchen,
A dangerous place full of sharp knives and hot fires and screaming men;
My father protects her from all that."

But my mother does cook.
It is easy, and quiet,
And so it is difficult to notice,
But it happens.

She taught me to make spinach pies,
And when the frozen mixture itched my hands,
She took the filling from me and did it herself.

Meat, as wrested from nature by brave huntsmen,
Is tough and stringy and crusted with cartilage,
And when I clean it thoroughly,
I am doing as my mother taught me.

Decorated cakes are soft and fine and, yes, unnecessary!
But people eat with their eyes,
And balance the bitterness of life with all things sweet,
So I am doing as my mother taught me.

Setting a kitchen to rights may be as dreary
As removing the dead from the battlefield
After the spoils are won,
But both prevent rot and disease.
We do it for others as much as for ourselves.

That is what my mother taught me:
To act like someone else cares about me,
And to show I care in return.

Some People have never experienced true Relief.
Pain does not just stop, it leaves Pleasure
To settle like rainwater in its dent on the couch cushions.
Some People never Rise because they never Sank
One can writhe contentedly in Nothingness,
One can *** when a Headache lifts its pall.
To Some People, it is good to sing
Of "freedom," of "love," of "pain."
Some People have always Walked Without Chains,
Some People have never been Hated,
Some People have never experienced true Relief.

When the natural color of your lips
Makes Pantone’s list
And suddenly for the first time in years
the **** lipsticks in the drugstore reflect back at you
A bouquet of roses which compliment your hair and eyes
Suddenly, when you never wore pink before
Now you revel in it

If your skin bubbles up in pimples
Your fingers float up of their own accord
Dancing with the shared delusion of
A clean excision
Yes, it works this way:
Remove the thing of evil that has poisoned the water
Pluck it neatly from the tree and watch the flowers bloom

The face answers your fingerprints in a drop of blood:
No, it does not work this way
Your skin, your life, is not a lever
No two-step process,
No fulcrum to remove and leave behind a simple rod, inert
Not even a Rube-Goldberg machine
To be followed back end over end
The handkerchief chain from the clown’s shirt cuff
spirals out impossibly with no simple beginning

Welts on your face in dappled shades
Pantone’s colors of the year
You cover these over with foundation that
does not quite match
This portion of blood you seal away
And that portion you smear on your lips
Loving as much of yourself as it is possible
To buy in a tube