Like Ginger Root

By | 24 September 2002

Two months beyond the scar of grave
we could be mad at messes you left:
bags of flour roaming with bugs;
tarnished silver, geyser gray,
tea cups with their handles loose.
Bedroom slippers quick as mice
reminding us who owned
the corners of this dark.
It's time to go back and clean,
my sister said, as if she were
boxing alyssum tears
that crumble from mistaken touch.
If we scrubbed with the metal of will,
the bourbon of grief would leave —
we did until our palms
went raw and bled on lace.
Found burlap bags of tulip bulbs
the sun had started on its own.
Cobwebs and clumps of Persian hair
were tropes with a fabric of past.

We brushed and mopped
as maids erase some crazy night,
shake their heads at semen pools.
Uniforms of stoic bras with metal
in their sagging circles weren't
enough to hold a tomb with stinging rocks
that multiplied like winter hail.
We shook out oriental rugs —
hyper kids we meant
to settle down for bed.
They followed, clung,
they wetted, screamed
in margins of our memories.
I guess your stain deserved to stay.
“Out out, damned spot”
never worked for heroines
in Shakespeare's velvet tragedies.
Fruit stand gone, but still we knew
an Eden once dripped cherry juice.
Rooms still bore your fragrances —
glued to meat like ginger root.

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