The Rummage Sale

The IT had finally come to pass.
All we had to hold of you --
brass or silver, wood or china,
stacks of curled sepia.
A photo marked with 1936 in France.
Someone scribbled femme fatale,
scratched a smile in fading ink.
Your house was cold
even in this August oven
burning fingers as we looked.
We vacuumed cat hair off the drapes.
Mother swore at dusty cupboards
packed with jars of cardamom
left so long it qualified as antique sand,
made us laugh between black geysers of our tears.

Residue of character came crawling out
of every drawer. One whole chest
of silken scarves you tied
around a sagging throat
until you hit that knowing age
when wrinkles seem
like creases of the intellect.
Your husband's fluffy shaving brush --
that must have been a horse's tail
with mud and flies
of wishing fate had left him here.
A forty-year-old diaphragm --
in case you fell in love again.

Time to split your sets of dishes,
rows of Wedgwood, Staffordshires,
mounds of books, and mugs of pens --
these gospel tunes of poetry
that met the tragic at the stairs.
All the so-called valuables
were plates of dry, dismissed dessert
someone licked the frosting from.
It was the wrong day for sticky rain,
meager in its douching rites,
sweaty in the armpit's curve.
We needed some effacing wind
to shanghai contraband of grief.

The Sketch

Fire crackers on the screen explode and sail.
Our puppy shakes beneath our bed.
Snarls as I drag her out.
Sniffing for the bomb in dust.
It's New Year's Eve --
champagne time for nervous joy.
Glasses seem so brittle now --
there must be slivers in my hands.
On CNN, a camera pans the eager crowd.
Several children don the toys of spectacles
plastered with a U.S. flag
to trump their waning innocence.

"When I gwow up," my nephew says,
"I pwana be a gwiant piwot --
auways wocking cockpit doors."
His mother sighs that graveyard wheeze,
fidgets with a halo ring,
a wayward tress around
the tender globe of ear
that hasn't grown its jagged thorn.
Father's photo screams in silence,
deep dress blues and shiny medals
dusted by her fingerprints.

He's way too young to draw a plane,
an F-16 in coloring books,
but we've taught him
the size of its wings --
painted it an eagle's hue --
pointed beaks at liberty.
We've passed along a silhouette
that knows the curve of shadow well.
His signature, so brash and firm,
is forming in our wilderness

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