Bang off on trying to reach them;
they’re my sons
and only I know how their hair curls
almost scentless around their ears,
what kind of silence pleases them.
My mother says she would know them anywhere. Don’t believe her.
She hasn’t been able to find a job in the land of the dead. It’s just what
grandmothers say, to sound tough and accomplished. That harvest look—
headscarf and vast rounded basket—done too many times. If she wants a job,
it will come to her because less people have died. Or she could lose her religion.
Meanwhile five unnamed sons and I plunder skies
for tiny
nightling apples
so tart you can barely bear to eat them.
We’re ahead of the curve, you didn’t know it, but apples—they’re rocket fuel, and
we’re soon to pass through iciest archway of nearby space which, if we persist, will
turn to warm space, a promise, to many, of gliding, elegant life. A Memoir of Earth
is the title I’m working on. Don’t let your mother proofread, my boys say. She always
adds errors. I didn’t need to be told. My boys’ main talents are building archways and
roofs. They have undefeatable Roman genes. To avoid seeing yet another archway
you must close your eyes.
On earth, their grandmother keeps striking her stale matches, doing this since
her hysterectomy cashed her in. I lost contact with her then, never knew whether
they got her ovaries. She’s often seen again hobbling, weeping, so always we go to
fetch her with our grandest starry Roman cape, fetching her back in our hammock of
metallic fabrics, from the escapist stars.
With every thread of time, opportunity
she begs us to give her work. When we are silent she calls us long names
comparing us to dirt.
She was badly taught: she has never understood
subtraction is stronger than addition, doesn’t know what oaths
were required of us
to begin our work. Doesn’t care about warp and woof
or our weavers’ summoning rage and range, knowledge which could have netted
her at least an apprentice’s position. We must place her in that circular Roman place
where chipped statuary busts and columns are placed, where history people
pretend they will stay until they’re plucked up to be dead center of stage again.
All pretense. All of us know everything there is as valuable as glory-robed frauds
of religion, thick-collared, sceptered,
fast-trapped in
amber sepulchres of church.
Photo by Krisztian Tabori on Unsplash
