It’s not even night yet
but it’s already tick tock
stop the presses, close
your mouth, shut it tight.
I’m tight-lipped but sometimes
he talks anyway, you’re trying
to batter me, he says and I retort
what will make my bitter batter
better? Your poor mother, he says.
My poor mother? I’m unhinged,
coming back from therapy we’re
screaming in the car, Fuck it!
Save the money! he shouts
and I shout back until
his enormous tidal roar
reverberates Shut up
through all the empty chambers
in my chest. This is what
we have left—a typhoon
of angry disappointment
that could sink anyone’s boat—
and we are sunk. I admit
I’m one of those people
who don’t know how to shut up.
I need sound—the cabaret singer
clutching the hollow stalk
of the microphone before
she faints, or the small clicks
from unclaimed bodies in the morgue—
it’s their toes, blue & lonely,
each toe groaning a cappella when
the refrigerator lights go out
& all the dead limbs begin to sing.