what am I / trying to get at / with all this / digging for truth / all this (re)membering / & stitching together
pieces of a past / deaths & kissing / & the snake in her jaw / in the basement / wet cardboard stacked
I flip / through a time before me / all this (re)inventing / the first husband / black hair for everyone / flash
close your eyes / & see the house / where “god is love” / the mothballs / litter box caked full / & forgotten
the fence before we knocked it down / a plastic fork in the wet earth / & the cicadas / the cicadas want to be
in the poem / even though it’s not summer / I hear them / whirring from their tymbals / like doors
& old bones / I sweep up / abandoned shells from the steps / save the honey husks / dry & split / in a box
like the other boxes / I keep / of skins & hulls / & left behinds / is the mind a box / a poem / I know
the poem is a world / holds one / so many / what are my memories / & why / are they mine
flash like lightning / pieces of photographs / the camera / flash / close your eyes & see / fireworks
green for a second / then my brother’s hand / a backyard barbecue / his face wearing sauce / summertimeseed-
spitting / & swarm of cicadas / they demand to be / in the poem / what did I make up
what is a dream / invented / in the turn of sleep / & what is a (re)collection of something / pressed
like seed into soil / or ghost-faced leaf between book pages / what of this is really my mother’s
belongs to her / I mean / what can I hold / & what should I / give back