Selected Poems

David Glover

Inheritance

I know words may do little to salve
The trunk of heartache
But perhaps
The roots
Can use some
Affirmation

Stories of you have been the stones
A rogue memory’s bedrock
The dirt and water mossed footage
Your actions, motion pictured

A dandelion sprouts out of the dug
Primal veiny misuse of rotten roots
Cleft at their bark
Unsheltered arterial children
Womb—Home—Mother—Earth
Parasympathetic nervousness
Ravishing salvations laughter
Time and again
Pulling me back

Extremities furled
Yarn locked baby
Umbilical necklaced
Don’t Push!
Or PUSH
Whatever the commandment
No matter,
You saved my life
that day

You rest within my facets
double helix—eyes, nose, gap toothed smile
Dad’s pictured too—in great relief,
the presentment of two souls
swaddled one
like some double dutch stitching
Dad says you met at a bar
I still have yet to memorize your number
I rest my eyes on a photograph of you
Ocular assurance that my inheritance
Is different than my siblings’

And why is the image “spitting?”
Is it sick?
Has it run out?
Will it leave me?

 

Cold stone

Kaleidoscope optics
Peek-a-boo

Body bubble wrapped
6 yr. old burrito

Internal organs mix vegetabled

Pot-hole eyes
We hit a pothole!

Swerve left
We’ve stopped now

He unraveled my ragdoll body

Took a two by four to the scalp
Unfamiliar combing

I don’t remember my conscience
I don’t remember being a part of the group

Or the taste of blood,
Salt, iron, iodine, gasoline skewers and the block party scene

I just remember,
The knock-knock, who’s there?
Of a familial face
The relative feeling of forced hands
On private parts

The pulp of my teeth in a burgundy black mouth—after eating the curb
The chicken bone pop of my elbows
The crack of my wrists being tied
I’m double jointed now

I’m broken black
I’m cold stone
I’m ruined
I’m beneath death
I’m almost gone

We’re on the highway now
My brain’s in a blender

We’ve stopped now
On the off road of a back road

I hear the metallic click of the trunk,
Or my bones,
Or a gun
My blood’s wrung
I can see the sun

I can see his eyes
He looks familiar
He looks like me a little,
Relatively sick and a bit young
The drapes close
The blinds shut and blind

I know
I know
I know him

 

Keep me by the sun

The flower grows and is plucked,
Like black pepper from my teeth. I remind myself
their journey is different than mine.

The stemmed orphan—cut at its ankles,
finding a way—to listen—without roots
To the water beneath.

Closer now
To drink
And easier—to drown
But that won’t happen

Because someone will choose me
They’ll pick me up
And take me home
I will be the cause
Of their joy
Not a thing
to pry between teeth

I’ll be centered
In some room
Near a window—for all the Birds
to wonder how
I levitate.

—About my wounds;
They were given to me,
And I carry them
—In my spine
At the edge of my being

I’ve seen a few magicians
salvage my brothers and sisters
—a way to live—post
rot,
dry as roots
Or bones

I am assured
There is a second kind of life
When wetness has left our lips
And relief tastes like silence
and we begin to shed more easily

Even so,
Keep me by the sun