My tiny body (D&E)

I’ll never be half a football field of nerves,
just a cell for a season’s-”“in a cell,
a miniature galaxy pregnant with possibility,
an alien with big black eyes watching
for the vacuum, of space taking is not my home.
I, being of sound mind and not much say, leave my few feeble cells to
my mother: my last testament to fight off disease for decades.

Flushed at this funeral, a little red-faced and now wasted:
somatic septic cells in fetal position rowing, then wading through fecal
mix in matters (too private to halt) with dioxins to incinerate lungs of pets and
pets that are children and yes, even, children, but that wouldn’t be green.
Pieces: umbilical, ambivalent, paraxial, personal, particles,
a gorey inconvenient truth, a choice warming in an all too earthen oven,
too full for responsibility to try ‘n muster the strength to alter a sound to see
my tiny body.

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.