The body burns its own flesh back to blazes.
So near the fire, I’m cold. Elaborate:
Drawn down from heaven, what touch mesmerizes?

First, you take leave of your senses.
Then, you lose your mind
to wonder. Split the difference:

And consider the way they are always in progress.
Even after centuries; the way they hide
The speaker but not the voice. The sound

Neck pulled back. Wrists tied. Weight pops
shoulder from socket. All disjunction.
So many Judgment Days. Hell absorbs us

Eugene would say, "Someone died . Time to redecorate."
Everything we owned was secondhand.
We needed to move. We were running out of space.

1. A mother’s lifelong rage. The slow burn
of a wire behind an old house wall, its paper
ornamental to the last, going