My mind's aflame
like the wet open buds
in the azalea-the reds
a seared lipstick across clipped lawns,
the oranged mouths livid, tiered
to such crass abstraction.
The neighbors gather
at the front entrance, the fat pastor
lets boards fly – the garage door
closes on the wail of his invectives, the wife's
face puffing, just gasping. My mind's aflame –
it's those names, flash of the Airstream
just past, clash of pans falling, just
now – three houses down. A boy
wheels past on his bicycle, the toy dog follows
with the face of a mule. My child
watches undistracted
while her father's face
fills with words. Mushrooms sprout
spurious and greedy,
march toward us across the lawn. Termites
shatter the fallen log. It's that flaw
in the face, in that instance. His lips
smeared and insufficient.
My soul's a knobbed landscape-boxed,
hedged, affixed, enclosed-
a domestic outcropping, suborned
doomed, quite unsentimental
alone.
