THE CUCKOO CRY

Lost the milk, spilled my marbles, our thoughts are fragile

says the Russian prof, & I try to gather, hold tender

both spilled & lost, my ugly diptych of spring,

every spring my windows open & ugly happens,

I try to hold it together, though maybe should let it go,

gush, let spring bark & heat rain from pit-stained

clouds, let the lark, no, the cuckoo cry.

Let spring say (the truth) I called my mother

a bitch. Said everyone in the neighborhood knew.

She had almost struck down my door, asking who

was on the phone, who, she had struck me,

called me names, forbidden me from talking

(WHO) on the phone, some boy wasn’t it,

sick boy spreading his sick musky spring,

American spring, beastly goo of wrong wanting.

Spring says I told my mother she was living in

a dream, could never go back to the way things were.

& she said, Not even here? I can’t say what I feel,

here, the one place I have in this stupid country,

I can’t just be, rest, I have to fight, even at home?

Spring says it doesn’t want to be personified,

wants to be forgotten. Doesn’t want to be trigger

for memory. Spring says it & fall are retracting

their contractual smells & birds, their unlimited

catalogue of liminal spaces. Fall says, Stop

naming children after me. I say, People name

their kids Autumn, not Fall.