A Son of Wishes 


A son my mother wants, any baby,

she would say, I’ll take any 

baby you’ve got as long as it’s a boy 

baby, man baby, sweet-eyed 

baby don’t get me wrong,

this bosom longing,

this breastly want, these soft

hands are not baby kill baby, girl baby boinked, 

bunkered, bumped off by babbling 

stream, washing basin, by old linen, 

by the smell of garlic, is not two 

daughters, sisters, the crow they 

called son, bad son they’d say 

when the crow tapped on the glass, 

bad son they’d say when the crow 

dropped an egg that meant too 

many gullets to feed, their 

gullets, our gullets 

going lax the year that went 

bad that went dusty 

that went forsook and showed 

us the character of stuff, the actual density, 

nutrients, atoms, constitution 

of stuff, that which can be 

eaten, that which 

cannot, so the next year,

when we regretted the last, 

that it had happened, that 

it had to happen, and went 

looking for crows, 

we discovered the world was 

crowless too and things 

bigger than a mother 

and her wants, bigger 

than the scavenger with the sun 

at his throat who went after 

the only calf, and bigger 

than the sun who picked 

another warm body to dress






The Taste of Things


There were words my mother 

never taught me:


juniper

hamlet

stucco

junco


They filled 

us up, these 


unspoken words 

neither of us 

knew


Eventually quiet 

broke open


A tree meaning nothing 

to us 

broke it


It coalesced 


kept its sex 

in grey-blue 

berries 


offered us 

a drink


There


There was some

of the bitterness 


without which we had lived