Introspection
(for Anna Freud)
1. from Troy to Aulis, with a few stops
Dissonance
she wrote once to her father
is like a dream in which it all happens
later
there as I’m led
all I am is in the house
but all the future is shocking
with its exquisite
fear under me, starry-eyed
black black black
black sea
ecumenical
tea-service
Sevres
I push a drawer close
open
who’ll oil it
who’ll come for me when the house shakes
who’ll shorten my life
like a fist
the house sits on stilts
it is a live wire
in a merry-go-round of weather
and there is the boy rummaging through my life again
he’ll find it
if he looks
the skin is broken into
my room is ransacked
in eight seconds we’ll see how the back of it
is like a tor glowing with missiles
tower
this way, maniac
2. Mexico
That night she had a clear dream in which they were dying in Spain.
There were flowers in the room–gardenias–angelica on the nightstand.
A mandolin player played. She had bit her lip and so she watched him
leave, wiping blood on the pillow.
(silence)
(distinguishing mouth)
It was the smell of betrayal, she said.
It would straighten him.
He had the fear of the wolf, also.
3. something in the room
because it was wretchedly late
because she had taken something mechanical, she had taken it apart
a clock only two hands to go
baby
en face regarde-là do not kill me
she banged it onto the mantle
she threw it onto the floor
she cursed
and she wished that there had been a fire underneath it
that he had stepped into the circle
4. a jugular
Now he says
I will sit behind you
I will wait on you
always handless
let us reconcile
You can turn around at just
any time
you want
I’m sorry
she says now
I will believe you
speak French
garotte
bien
You can watch
annihilator
annihilator
she falls into the moon, the full moon,
for seven straight days
originally published in The Melic Review, Summer 2005