Dilation and extraction

(or I’ll never be half a football field of nerves)

A cell for a sitcom’s length,
in a cell, a miniature galaxy
pregnant with possibility,
alien with big black eyes waiting . . .
for the vacuum, of space is not
my home I leave my fetal cells
to my mother in my will to fight
off disease for decades.

Flush at my own funeral, medical waste:
somatic septic sewer cells of
fetus mixing with fecal matter or
dioxins in the air incinerating lungs
of pets and actual children–that wouldn’t be Green-
Pieces: umbilical, ambivalent, paraxial, personal.
An Inconvenient Choice: about warming in an oven
already too full for responsibility,
try, try, -mester the strength to ultra-sound
Good-bye.
~electric humming.

June Widow (after Saving Private Ryan)

If I pick her, she will be torn,
beautiful flowers, back over the pond, in a vase,
the French countryside–I’ve seen her wear it on Sundays,
the place we met–the demolished cafes–sans the coffee;
we share memory of mothers with the crash of cannons,
beyond the river where red was roses and Revlon
and knee cuts on the playground,
we left our school-teaching-selves:
like the rubble above our brothers
that collapsed our bridge home.