keepsake

Nobody got out with their life.

When one bridge burned, the other
asked you to be its mother.

Far-off backcountry
amen, time ago.

Lost child ransoms
tempt the bull thistle.

Clots of lice, open-mouthed
as in glory, fluted.

I fought it off. I beat it
back off me.

The distances
listened and bent the silver.

I was frightened of my heart.
I had never heard of me.

The players, the mating waters
like trellises of flesh bonnets.

Late fruits of the domestic
mystic pelt the parade-goers.

God hovers the surgery
of our molester, helps him to pee.

You are the white bowls
where hidden ribs coil.

The unborn roses bind our house.

Autobiography

The boy whose nose inspired a thousand surgeries
Coddles rosemary in the flowing scrolls of his beard.
A halo of plump gnats keep well
Their steady altitude of Holiness over him.
Divisible, the father goes
Like a plodding donkey, mustard-lipped
And elliptical. Madness adores repeating.
There-there, okey-dokey. Your birth, my hobby.
Dress, they will soon be here.
Voices of birth are uneven, even along
The croaking rivulets of wounds.
Night munches
And the salads are composed expertly:
Red wine vinegar, squeeze of lemon,
Mayonnaise folded in the care of anchovy.
A pair of monks begin singing, the older reading
The hymn behind the younger
With a careful arm draped, meaning possession.
This is the shape I’ve chosen, having lived with Art
For a little less than three green bean cans
And a slutish, mole-pocked bingo deck.
Love alters the shooting range.
You console him with grilled peach toast points.
My dead teacher washed sheep-studded
Nails in the blood of cows watching trains go by.
This is why I buy pictures—
How marvelous to see the cars.
That I turned out to be living
Well, and concealing the lice of old friends.
Romance, I was the fatty heart locket
At the antique store knotted among copper pony coats.
There is a letter kept in a music box there
So passionate in its skill. It can kill.
Demon butterfly feet catch in mud-honey.
Blond hair falls out of the seashell.
And when I woke I knew
How to pick the organ clean as the throat of an Elvis doll.
A crotch of mint makes the Heir come near
What the world will do.

Mitchell Glazier's poems have appeared
or are forthcoming in Poetry Magazine,
Lana Turner, River Styx, Annulet, and
elsewhere. He edits poetry for American
Chordata and directs a creative writing
program for high school students at
Columbia University's School of the Arts.