Thicket Of Pins
By Nina Puro
The milk they fed you on long
soured, but you give
it anyway. Your given name
blackberry bramble, your given name
queen of sorrow. We are all
so thirsty in the village
of what we once wanted. Don’t
you know where to hang
god’s eye, blueeyes? Don’t
you know language is useless? That
I stitched the blanket I wrapped
the wreck in? Don’t
you know goodbye lasted
a decade? Goodbye
each room’s still flooded
to the chandeliers. Goodbye
fish swam slow circles between
the chair rungs. Goodbye
they know a language we don’t. I can’t
name the marled color of the fishes’
eyes or how they match the crystal
goblets broken there but
always full now, or how the glasses
match the warm cups that suck
the poison from your back in a
backroom in Chinatown where
the radiator hisses steam but
the linen curtain’s filled &
emptied & filled with cold
air from the cracked
window. Your spine
an open door. I’m not
sure anymore if memory is one
air & history is the other or if we
are the blade where they
meet. I thought we’d be more
than air swallowed or said, dust
motes & phone wires
for miles. I’ve goodbyed
the sill where the jasmine tendrilled out &
out & browned into
a broken umbrella. I’ve this
to give: I’ll go back
over the hill to where the little
house was kerosened, walk into to the little
house still smoldering. I’ll
go back glad.
