Trash
Oil hair daughters harden in heat.
Tar sticks their dirt-nailed feet.
Stubborn suns
swing a broken pendulum
from a ripped board porch.
Make this work,
says her chord cracked guitar.
Make this sound,
says her summer e-string
picked clean.
Desire tips a cool beer, hums
a sad bee in her ear, drives the lincoln
at night into skunk musk and fox rut,
hot snort at dawn, mountain doe
skinned up, drained, and hung.
Her screendoor slaps dark.
Between her iron eyes green yes green.
She sings sweet meadow seed, timothy,
crab grass, dust. Skin, dirt, faith
weigh less than dusk on her shallow bed.
Her daughter cries powdered milk, licks tuna
from the can. Rust furrows her forehead.
Mama is kitchen steam and black coal,
cotton long since thin. Her voice
creaks a hinge-- today, today.
Make this work,
says her chord cracked guitar.
Make this sound,
says her summer e-string
picked clean.
Love cuts the knees so deep she shoves it
to moth-balls with polaroids. 1963
when her dough daughter rose in her
battered body whether she liked it or not--
all blood, all bone, all knees.
-Laura E. J. Moran, Live Bait, 2005