After Reading Sarah

Monday finds you in your basement
The light is a sore spot on the back of your hand
And it is cold, a plum sized bump,
this hammer raised wordsmith a wound
untended. Were you ever loved? Dear clown

your paint runs in the alley of need,
your father's cloak full of sewage
harbors vermin and device, the bang on the head,
the snow, the vision. Poetry, her search for clarity,
are guests unfulfilled. Shuffling, a search for cause
yields the answer: confusion, histrionics a backhand slap.
In the fall, we starve, endure a short shift, synaptic bruise.
The snow is thigh deep and drifts
above the level line of vision and the world
is turned.

This satisfies your hunger, the salve is full of detritus.
The source, your father, distributes it like candy.
You are on your knees at the pew, your mouth open,
ready for sacrament.

In the name of Sarah, the disagreeable note has stopped.
You are not the form. The rain meets the river.
With the lidded jolt separate, intensity
is it's own jubilee. On the interface
of surface tension comes a passage, a chase mop,
her shield against the quay's anomaly.

Water womb catacomb, the bearing down, the push.
A splay of viscosity, that first swim,
then the turn of cartilage to bone.