I’m under the blue tarp. My feet hidden
in polyester onesie pajamas, Max’s wolf suit
but without the trap door. Climbing out
for goodnight under a low stage and a flywheel
of stars. It wasn’t you who dissected the fish
with the still beating heart, not you, who couldn’t
club anything without a Yiddish epithet or a sigh.
I didn’t say a thing at your funeral. Family
plus two. So I climb back in, dragging
a Coleman, tequila, crackers, a 5 gallon of water.
My neighbour yelling at her cats like that
will do a thing. Step into memory: the Polish graveyard
where maybe we’re from, crack a summer globe
of tomatoes like a note wrote to myself each decade
before the possibility there might be less
than one left. You feel to me like a lake towel
left in an overgrown lot. An unnameable key.
I eat the uncolour of the Hebrew letters. Watch
the minutes tick like rain’s café chatter, wash water,
your label maker labeled Tupperware: Lines.
Scrapers. Fishin’. The tide changes again.
If I had the god damn organ still
I’d eat it or flick it into the massacre forest
let it listen for the ticks of two clocks run
by anxious scorekeepers, their bicker. Corner kick
for Saka. I could have made a chowder, carpaccio,
or buried it here and visited. Brought beer.
