for Giula Dupree
1 Her Floor
A finishing nail
has raised its head
up out of the wood,
and gone all
human and sad.
A tiny blank expression,
catching the sun,
like a matchhead
scraping against my giant shoe.
As if to burn it down.
As if the old woman
had known what to do.
2 Salvage Yard
This is the way she slumped and died,
on the vinyl seat, on Litchfield Road,
hit by a truck on the driver's side,
at forty-five through the red light.
This is the son who wasn't there,
was not and never had been there,
and did not kill her, is that clear?
Nor turn the wheel to save her.
3.Graveside
And now this white stone
tooth has nothing to grind
against but sky.
All the panicky
rage is coffined,
it's tamped in,
deeper than I am
tall. Nothing to fear
now but the poison's
own loneliness,
standing here,
saying its charm,
as if to defend
her now. As if her first
little red scream
when nobody came
to offer the breast
were stopped, and pardoned.
(Southern Poetry Review, Vol 45, No 1, 2006)