Toro, Cielo, Sirena
I. Toro
Il toro torna al fonte del proprio dolore
fino alla morte di uno o l’altro.
Your father left you waving
the carnelian flag of his death,
his blood converting to poison
despite wishbones snapped,
your entire bank of pennies thrown
into the fountain, wishes lobbed
upward to stars, not knowing
that even though you could see
them shining they too had already died.
Now your mother drags chains
through the house, an everlasting
processional of pain, memory, regret.
She has forgotten the twelve-year-old girl
dispensing morphine in the living room
but she will never let go his still muddy
hunting boots, those discharged shells,
his last deer still in the deep freezer.
You, daughter, are a giant heart
with pigtails in the shape of bull’s horns,
twelve years old and still
charging.
The bull returns to the source of her pain
until one, or the other, is dead.
II. Cielo
Il cielo fiorisce attraverso il deserto,
una pesca, Matura. Pronta.
The first boy to present
his palms face up to your body
seemed nice enough to marry.
Groping for a replacement,
a Catholic, a wet nurse to suckle.
To keep you ‘til death would you part
he got you both lost in the desert,
but it was there you found your horizon,
in the heat of truth, the future pouring
from the sky, wilting his tender, plump skin
like an earthworm stuck in the sun.
The sky blooms across the desert,
a peach. Ripe. Ready.
III. Sirena
Quando le sirene si sbudellano
per l’amore di uomini sensa gambe.
When mermaids gut themselves
for the love of legless men
the whole world is finally falling apart.
Stack them up, all these brutes,
what they did. We sang out a love song
and they ripped us from our water,
hosed off our skin,
cut off our hair,
hid our breasts.
It only takes a night to drain
all the water from the ocean
and fill it up with poison sperm.
They know nothing of apologies,
only kidnappings.
There are no songs left, the sea
is savagely quiet, a mother churning
with no children to feed.
A moonless shore at the bottom of a bucket.
|
