Presential

I wrote a lot of poems about my aunt's cancer.

Cancer is an oddly creative font.


Presential 7/20

She’s at the window again – the black birds are spiraling
it’s a Goya painting – our bodies are reaching
                        skin is sallow

Remember chopsticks at the piano – always staccato
breaking in – shafts of light over carpet
We watched chipmunks horde – peanuts off your shoe

The pear trees were sickly – blighting and then gone
There was a game we played running
                        weaving around them

Apples were knotted and rotten – most fell early
the dull earth pack sound without an echo

In the high humidity the pig farms reached out their hands
and touched our tongues – hooded and black
                        we never told the trees we missed them

She’s at the window again – that chopstick window
with the craft white washed glaze
A bird smacks into it while you play Rainbow Connection

This is the hazy memory – hollow skin sagging on her form
more a Freudian portrait – a Rimbaud venus
                        waving as she vanishes