Devil’s Lake

The punishments were just as lavish as the draperies.

Every other soap dish was really someone’s eye

in detention. The chandeliers did not burn oil or wick.

And there I was, cradling my Cornish game hen

two weeks into a sentence of five. Nobody wanted a kiss

as much as a book of matches or sturdy rope.

At first I believed the hen would speak, or at least try.

The roaster left a shine upon its back, a glaze

that reflected the hideous cranium of each brownstone

on the block where I grew up. Black windows

upstairs for the clockmaker, that tiny plastic geranium

never to drop its false squirrels to the sill again.

There was a book about a melee, and how I could not

start one of my own, no matter how passionately

I prayed for it. Like trying to remember a day when

there was no such thing as a lemon, just a chill

expanse of something undisciplined. A pile of wool

at the bottom of the butter churn. So useful

in a way that never made its own sense. I dropped

my hen from the only tower I could open.

The gust of air we felt was no stranger than the sky.

We moved to a suburb. My mother

moved to another suburb altogether.

We didn’t invite her. Regulations

prohibited her shade of country blue.

I was not known for my bountiful

sympathy. Both suburbs had cars,

mailboxes and mail to fill the boxes.

It was safe to assume that my name

was followed by terms like nervosa

or immaculata, that only my mail

landed in my box. My mother’s

exile went unnoticed. They farmed

her, but not to make more of her.

Enough dead deer on the highway

to feed everyone in her suburb,

but not in mine. We had too many

gerbera daisies per capita. I found

a man who exhibited a fondness

for my pro forma. His Canada geese

ceased bombing the boulevard,

but values never ascended again.

The wind was our new pharmacy.

My mother never crossed the road.