Two Poems

Iridescence

The child who goes
by the nickname Bug
decides to raise snails

because they're iridescent
beauties, each one
both male and female,

who ooze along
fragile and unhurried,
eating pooping fucking

serenely as far as
she can see. Bug thinks
they're worthy of protection.

She sets up a series
of terraria, persuades
a neighbor to accept

one glass case of mollusks
tiny as bread crumbs,
mist them several times a day

to keep them moist
but not too moist,
feed them pureed vegetables

until they're grown, then
turn them out to forage
on their own

like children who
have claimed the right
to cherish what they choose.

 

What Looks in the Window

          Let me forget
          when the hanged man
          looks in the window.
          —Ruth Stone, "March 15, 1998," In the Next Galaxy

I wake in the night drenched in regret
for the ways I've failed, the ones I've failed. No one hanged
himself, but I've left more than one struggling man.

          I can live with no man.
          I must not forget
          where peacefulness hangs.

I kept choosing my father, although his form changed
from angry man to addict to depressed man.
I flourish alone. I do not forget.

What I forget hangs in the body of a man.