*

The pale stone under my rib

expects an answer

thinks there’s a breath

filled with milk

—I sleep on this stone

as a convict will touch a key

melting in his shirt pocket

—I don’t turn

or drag it off like a splinter

or ladder.

I can’t get up.

My side won’t dry.

I leave marks on the road

on the bedsheets, stare at the smoke

as if I recognize a voice

—in this road

the gravel act as guides

through their own mass-grave

the torn-from-its-throat

that can’t get up—this stone

expects a number, rounded off

easy to remember

how many come each night to breathe

through the cracks in the road.

It knows I’m looking :fathers, mothers

sisters, sons

still blacken the sky

—who can find them

under this dark, swept

under the wide roller brushes

by a chimney sweep

who once closed a door—he yells

get off the street

no one’s here to take the blame

—he even talks in reich

in roads that never heal

—too much is under the ground

and the stone that can’t get up

crawls into traffic

into the fumes

into his house and children

who love him, who listen

side by side to the story

how one night some nut

who wouldn’t let go

wouldn’t let anyone touch a small stone

he kept calling his sister, his mother

his father—side by side

as bricks will stand around a chimney

that licks the dirt

with hot, small mouths.

There is no chimney

except the soft cries :stones

that for the first time

felt a gentle hand.

They were reaching for their mother’s breath

—it takes a small breath :a child’s voice

under the dripping grates

no one in all the world would hear

except this stone, that stone

that one  : cinders

to pave this road

as charcoals hand in hand

drifting over the last breath they heard

over this stone

that managed to stay pale

that thinks the moonlight

which hardly touches it

will give it an answer.

I tell it yes. Sleep under me.