Tuesday, March 24, 2009

I promised you a poem

so here it is. It is unfinished & lacking direction & I have no clue what to do with it (& I love ampers&s):

Hauntings

I.
She couldn’t explain it but
there was something wrong
with the house.

The dog would cry as the sky drained black,
tied, untied, tied, untied, moved
from post to post to post around the yard
by hands that were not her own,

the kitchen-dark made noises, made
hollow-stepped noises, raspings
of words caught on broken, split lips
that bled into dreams, no clearer, just darker,

if she closed her eyes she could almost
make out the vowels, remnants of conversation
left hanging in dead air,

and the empty branches of mango trees
in the once-orchard were full of eyes,
with curtains drawn she still slept
with the gaze of hundreds

concentrated on the knots of her spine.
Mango trees house spirits, didn’t you know?
Even the lizards with tissue paper skin
and wet black eyes trembled on the panes.

When she finally convinced her parents
to move, they asked about the land.
Yes, what about the land?

In the orchards, in the once-orchards,
the soil was fertilized with bodies
of village women, unnamed, missing,
she and her family slept in the gaze of

hundreds watching,
killed,
tilled,
in the earth below the floorboards.

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