My nephew says seeing a cardinal means / there’s a soul nearby, so I wonder who’s flitting / from the red oak to the neighbor’s fence / to watch us at this vacation house.
The fish tank / / hummed, as their fish-eyes bulged into two drunk uncles leering at our / see-thru nightgowns, with flammable gills.
I needed to be a part of something—anything, a neighborhood—a community, glued together like dark red nail polish dripped dried on white bathroom tile, a messy blob of circumstance reborn.
so there was debt / and gratitude / / and duty before / ceremony
On my back / my ears underwater / but not / my mouth my breath tuned / / a strange subterranean –
Legend says it was Waxwings / that plucked out Saint Lucy’s eyes. / She still carries them around on a platter / like an offering of deviled eggs.
On the morning / of my autistic son’s twentieth birthday / I visit bringing cake and groceries / that he will eat alone / and I wonder if his house will ever have its church.
My father closed his word, laid down the red crayon he used to mark pages, perhaps from Leviticus, For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: you shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
