Who Are You and to What Are You Joined?, and: Town Picnic

Who Are You and to What Are You Joined?

The house is not the fire,the fire is not the house,

but how do you pry them apart?The pile of ash you’re standing in

seems to have come out of youin an unimaginable way. Your body still suffersfrom the procedure.

You should describe the burned girlso that we might care about her:a white form. Pale and racial. Uniform and glaringin a fully rendered front yard.

You’ve been given a sieve to go through the ashesand find another protagonistto take your place.

You want to give her your face,but she already has a face.

You’re having a hard time sifting her apart from what she says.

She says no to whatever you want to do,whether it’s nail her skirt to a floorboard as she cooksor cool her silly little hand in a pitcher of milk.

She shouts. She doesn’t come apart from what she sayswithout becoming imaginary. The cat curled up under the bedis a raccoon because that’s what it turned out to be.The confusing ladder you climbed yesterday was actually a tree.

You are an old, old woman. You will be,so you always were. Your hip will break crossing the floorto lift the pitcher, so your hip has always been broken.That’s why you often crawl to get out of the way.

It makes sense. Someone is drunk, crying in the street.It’s a bad choice. Now she’s a smear and always will be.You note the color leeching from her hair as she wanders away,her fading personhood. You’ll try again laterto find a better girl. The fire is startingon the top floor again.

If you can get outside in time, you can watch the attic windowlovingly funnel out the smoke.The center beam inhales and then swings past your head.The house reaches for you at the end.

Town Picnic

There’s a space that has been cut out of the woodsin the shape of a man.A mild-mannered space. It just watches the fleshas it moves. Only a few men from town go and fill the shape—Mitchell, Raymond, the doctor.

Maybe all of us go.I’m going now.

The teenagers go, their dim black-and-white clothesmeant to dull them, sheets thrown over polished wood.They should be sent out past the farthest clearing and told,flatly: send the new ones back as they come.

The little trees, we use themas canes, and we hurry, gladeven if we miss it, their faces fading as they get lower down into the pitof another person.It’s OK to look.The sun explodes in front of us all the time.It sits and swells on the tree line and releases each day,letting it come toward us.