Lapsed Catholics
in a bucket she's collecting words,
plucking them from stems from vines from seeds,
the sun as set as an old stain
and she's fitting them together like lincoln logs.
how can she contrive the stutterings and speech
of gears and motors and interworkings, all things
gutteral, intestinal,
a madness as thundering as a train rolling through
a tunnel in the dark night?
our words, in their bouquets and pretty
windowsill arrangements, roll up and down
our tongues in the way children
run up and down a slide, freefalling
into emerald grasses.
plucking them from stems from vines from seeds,
the sun as set as an old stain
and she's fitting them together like lincoln logs.
how can she contrive the stutterings and speech
of gears and motors and interworkings, all things
gutteral, intestinal,
a madness as thundering as a train rolling through
a tunnel in the dark night?
our words, in their bouquets and pretty
windowsill arrangements, roll up and down
our tongues in the way children
run up and down a slide, freefalling
into emerald grasses.