Broken Mirror

Lives also can be shattered this way,
like your own, when you look
into the face of someone on the sharp
edge of loss, her own fracture points
obvious as a hammer.

~


Laundry

on the door w/ red thumbtacks,
a rug once oriental thru whose incanted patterns
the mesh of its underbelly wears out,
metal skeletons inside the walls, almost filthy
the great silver knees of exhaust pipes like
some titillating glimpse up a dancer’s skirt
(she’s sitting, girlish, w/ her knees together,
one teasing foot crooked away), then

in comes the cart, rusted replacement
for the wheels that skidded on black ice
all the way thru the concrete median
on xmas day, mesh bags filled w/ the length
of a long-distance dissertation, outlines
of some systems theory stretching its seams,
the daughter-in-law lost to cancer,
as if she could be found w/ the detritus
of socks, among the sweepings of collected lint
in this room’s grimmer corners, everyone gone,

empty now, all i can hear is the power grid’s
awful humming, the low clothy thumps,
some rush as the machines expel dirty water,
replenish themselves again w/ the clean.

~

(from Advice to Young Veterinarians, a series):

The Milk Fever

My favorite, he pounded
the steering wheel.
When you arrive, they’re dying
all over the place. But
by the time your tires
burn the drive, they’re
alive—no
not just alive
but right as rain, thumping
tails against their sides,
chewing cud, knocking
heels against the cow pail.

Unless, he said then.
Unless, of course, and mind—
this will happen from time
to time—you kill ‘em
with your calcium, powerful
stuff, sure as nails in a
coffin, once in a while
one will kick the bucket.

c2005 M.Frost

"self portrait" Donna Dixon