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The Bridge

Each place, each place I’ve called home 
is bisected in origin by water, 

in time by roads and the bridges 
carry me across each time, 

home home not home. 

I release the thought after moving it 
from right brain to left and back. 

The bridge might be a placebo or diversion. 

We cross it in pleasure, 
dreaming its collapse. 

We cross it and drive up the hill, 
past the house where it happened. 

It happened / it is not happening, 
it is not happening, not now. 

Riveted to the empty 
sound, I wait, listen. 

Mute house. 

We cross the state line and in Kansas, 
it is Sunday, 
and we have already not gone to church. 

The bridge bows, and on it 
I find a still, dead starling: 
fresh red and almost with us. 

Where death shouldn’t be, 
in plain sight. We lose things 

on the bridge.
We go down with it. 

Hoarder

What I felt and what I was told to feel,

so what I learned: to fold up
the feeling, rearrange the room and hold
still. Now there is this stack,

disheveled, of true 
and untrue things
presented at once.

Just tape them to the wall,
and look. 

I forget where the bone broke
until it rains. It swells
like a used-up mattress 
left out.

Nothing disappears.
Drawers and shelves fill
even as I clear room
after room.

You’ll keep your bones as long 
as you can.

I take down the wall,
empty the drawers,
sort. Each thing saturated
in time. Narrow pathways 
to move in the crowded room,
hauls to Goodwill.

I must find a place I can live
inside, and

I either put it in the landfill now or
someone else does when I’m gone.

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