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Poetry from NHI publications

THE BLACK HOLE
I had an anti-matter mother who once had cancer, and there was no answer, she asked me if the Bible mattered, if Jesus really walked on the sea with her, and would take her hand like a dancer. I remembered her and me shar- ing young time together, young lemons and limes of time as she inflected me close as inquisitions on the back porch, and the oranges of her own childhood in Florida infinitied and filagreed within me, expanded as suns, or milken bombs filled with plums, and Vermonted summers of those far, vexed days took communion from us, just she and I together, after the death of my father, and sometimes we fought like tigers, yet flowers wept eclipses in her insteps, and I followed her flowingly, through all the vanilla of a thousand windowdries, all washed in carol rain, so when she, the sun, died in me, I had antimatter in my brain, and walked as a dead, dry talking stalk through the weed-high buildings of New York, and a whole universe compressed in me like a shadow-box with infinite mass and no bulk. and though she surely walks with Christ on Galilee, through infinite breakfasts of light, I am left to be her tree in the great galactic night.
CHRISTOPHER A. ZACKEY

THE BLACK HOLE

I had an anti-matter mother who once
had cancer, and there was no answer,
she asked me if the Bible mattered,
if Jesus really walked on the sea with
her, and would take her hand like a
dancer. I remembered her and me shar-
ing young time together, young lemons
and limes of time as she inflected me
close as inquisitions on the back porch,
and the oranges of her own childhood in
Florida infinitied and filagreed within
me, expanded as suns, or milken bombs
filled with plums, and Vermonted summers
of those far, vexed days took communion
from us, just she and I together, after
the death of my father, and sometimes we
fought like tigers, yet flowers wept
eclipses in her insteps, and I followed
her flowingly, through all the vanilla
of a thousand windowdries, all washed
in carol rain, so when she, the sun,
died in me, I had antimatter in my brain,
and walked as a dead, dry talking stalk
through the weed-high buildings of New
York, and a whole universe compressed
in me like a shadow-box with infinite
mass and no bulk. and though she surely
walks with Christ on Galilee, through
infinite breakfasts of light, I am left
to be her tree in the great galactic night.

CHRISTOPHER A. ZACKEY

from
New Hope International Vol.13 #6

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