Nobody has any business but me, to tell how
you came home, a white ball up pitted concrete steps,
home to our grandmother’s swirled carpet.
Knitted bundle, you wailed clues of that soft
rotten, that misconnection, that sever, that spasm
that broke your mother’s heart into blank starts.
You drug your feet, child.
Across the wood floor your twirling walker,
the rattling dance lurched down
fourteen steps: you were never lucky.
Your spilled blood flowed like menses, expected
rupture, bombardment of corners, ridges, juts.
The record player sat on the chest by the window:
blood, spit, and dirt where you plied
that delicate spinning with your scratched hands.
“Getting to know you,” know you, you and
Deborah Kerr on the vowels, one long happy drool.
Hollyhock ladies on the sill, I lined up for you.
With a towel, I held that white head
that smashed into the blank floor
and everything, I think, I could ever know.
You grew to be a crane, your head
bobbling on the tops of your friends
who took you to play with perfect aplomb.
Little citizens already, in the grass,
they calculated games you could not wreck.
I was the one who ran barefoot, terror light,
to grab you loping onto Garland Street,
laughing. I could have bashed in your head,
unsubtle brother, smiling outline.
Angel face, pushing to break with rudiments,
the best word for you is unused.
So your ankles drew up solemnly,
wrists in. The spasm locked. When I came to you
in your sterile steel circus, the last clowns
had gone home. Malicious beard raked your face.
On your head, practical blond hair razed
at short attention.
You seemed so heavy you would never float away.
Then you sank into your coffin in flannel pajamas,
the warmest bed you ever felt.