Neural Piano
(for my grandmother, Grace Paynter)
You see,
her mind was never
confined to that room
sea foam soothing green
gall bladder attacks
and projectile vomit
no,
it moved with music
scales sliding sideways
was scented
all things vernal
she sent it beyond
that jonquil window
where the sunlight
was weaker than
the pale blue
flame of her eyes
entire bouquets
used to bloom there
out into the garden
where the beauty
was so exquisite
it was maddening
the wires, drips,
patches, and i.v.
simply ceased to be
enforced reality no longer
her sterile misericorde
the aim always a blank point
bored in the way
of the boring
she suffered graciously
after they cracked
her treasured chest
the doctors
disinterred songs
classic harmonies
conducted by
dusk’s steely hand
“show me the way
from sin to mercy
I’m your sister’s sister,”
she said to me
then she pointed
at a pint of blood
cooling on a hook
screamed,
“it’s not a cardinal,
you fool!
it’s a coppery-tailed trogon”
the breast inflamed,
the breast infected,
redder than hers
she convinced me
it was perched
on a hibiscus
her tongue swollen,
her breath infernal,
Wesleyan,
yet almost sweet
real and regal
to me
her bare legs
still long, aristocratic,
translucent carriages,
she said,
“these birds
are attached
with sensitive wires
to my nerves”
as her unplugged eyes
rained down cadenzas
as her tears
turned to jewelry
brightly flooding
the room she never knew
with a light, her light,
which seemed to say,
“what’s so damn lucky
about that sun
if it can’t touch me,
walk beside me anymore?”
it was there
in that present
that her wounds
feminine as Christ’s
bled truth
drip drop dripped
off of ivory towers
into the ebony void
where my eyes
worked with insect agony
to reconcile a locked scene
that ached for a piano,
a minor key
for a kingdom
of rain.
Hardly a Butterfly
(for K.)
the dark times
bring the most songs
too soft
these voices
for this
solid air
breath’s promise
arrives dead
hangs insincere smile
cynical finger
pokes at nothing
the lightning exceeds
its own grasp
you never asked
to be its rod
judging shape
of subject
judging shade
inside object
here’s a wish,
end all stories
like dreams
i.e. no more conclusions
the faceless keep
their empty distance
ignorant to mother’s
trembling hand
reaching out from the stable
forming natural bridge,
she says…
Gravel Road
she brings a bowl
of ripe apricots
to this lonely room
where my body rots from within
for a while the walls fall away
I breathe without the burn, the choke
she removes the flesh
with just her bare hands
until left with only the hard pit
which she smashes with a hammer
extracts and feeds me the seeds
with some small chunks of ice
she wears a yellow dress
redolent of southern summers
returning from my youth
over nothing but her skin
she is what the sunlight
through the pale blue curtain
strains and fails to be
I search her eyes,
find a reason to believe
when she says,
“the tumors are dying not you”
then her smile breaks soft and clean
touches everything at once
just enough to get inside
now I can sleep.
William Crawford is the author of Fire in the Marrow. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize
