I like it out here under the barren peach tree
that flowers but cannot give. I like it
because the furnace of the wind blows hot air
at me and the birds creak from a nether tree
rusty hinge birds, and I nod along to their ruined tunes,
because I’m more here than I am there under
a poundage of failure, maybe it’s all the sad things
he whispers in my ear when I’m sleeping,
at home the verbs all pine for nouns, whimpering
for agents the way the baby whimpers
all the time, that little bundle of dark water, that stone
wrapped in swaddling cloth I crouch above half-
bent and try to hush because my mother taught me
how to pass into silence with her implements,
mallet or spatula, and the great clatter of pots against
pans as the children flee, scattered to hide, hunched
with my cousin beside me behind the cinderblock
wall, I didn’t know your mother was like this
she breathes, and I nod because what is there to say?