The Last Thing He Says Before His Death: “When You Get Home, I’m Sorry.”

by | Sep 20, 2011 | Blog, My Poems

The bed was wet
with spilled lilies –

white pouring
down

into the stem
like sickness.

You didn’t find a man in the rafters.

You didn’t expect a horse – hung

like an ornament

in the barn
next to a water-logged trailer.

What you wanted to see
was a carousel,

filled with dead leaves,
skeletal horses –

brown eyes
like his eyes –

teeth grinning from red lips.

Then the barn
and the tent

the line of ceramic elephants

would make sense

beneath the tree – the pruning body

the sea of cockroaches.