PICKINGS
Poetry from NHI publications
THE BLACK HOLE |
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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 Next poem Previous poem |
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