On The Crosswalk When The Light Swept Us In Red, Like Inmates Caught At The Foot Of Barbed Wire, My Mother’s Mortician, Middle-Aged And Boyish Like A Melting Lollipop, Tells Me She Was Such A Doll To Play With—“a docile and fragile and still…still so warm, warm, warm…such a warm puppet to fill in”—And He Dresses Her With Memories I Don’t Recognize, How He Carries Her On His Mind, The Weightless, Flightless Torment Of Her Body Outlined, Grief Magician, Courage Gardener, High Priestess In A Clam Shell, Does He Know That’s What Made Her So Blind Sighted By The Bottle, The Full And The Half-Ass Throttle, Old Magic In A Coffin Doesn’t Know How To Hold A Whip, How To Throw Past A Dead Grip, But Give Her A Star She’ll Find A New Wish, But Give Her A Son And She’ll Kick The Bucket, So He Undresses Her Proud Like A Cold, Cold Lollipop, And Tucks Her In Fire Like A Lightning-Existence, And Then Forgets Her Name So He Asks Me Nicely Because I Would Know It, And His Smile All Middle-Aged All Boyish, Waiting For The Boy With The Dead Mom Whose Heart Wears Someone Still, Still Rotten: But We Cross The Street, And I Don’t Tell Him