trout [ 7 ]
Tracy Slaughter [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]
The Memory of Nine Months in Water
 

The morning is       a door in      the moon when his small      cries lick my eyelid. 
Open the house to           the window of his face              wet already with wanting to 
live. A day                     delicious with his fingers in                   my heart. But always 
with the same            push under the skin of sleep             I disengage my body from 
the long dream                                             of itself.

He loves to see                  my face and its grey                   swelling. His hands clap 
out the magic                I make at cot-side fairy-                  black. He has learned to
make himself                 the shape of                 crucifixion. The signal to lift him into
life                     and still                      make bodies from milk.

The stairs are hospital steep and even                      a breath could Jack and Jill us. I 
cannot touch                 the safety over the side           that I carry my son. Each body 
must have                only one half                               for the heavy heat of children. 
We crack                    the code of                  the long-footed carpet in darkness and 
slide down                  the wall for                 light. It stitches the eye-sill open with 
wifely sense.

We come to the cold breath of the floor.                           The faces of time are from 
fairy-tales. You must put yourself into                                                   his mouth to 

stop the pain                                                                                      of learning to 
speak. You must     solidify angels and mathematics in his wet chain of events. 

You must              accept thoughtlessness : don't turn                  on the television. 
Hundreds of holy                       particles glitter from the nipple       he gluts in time. 
This pattern of silence                is much like a quilt           a piece donated by many 
women all sewing their fingers to the fabric but only bleeding lightly from lips and eyes. 
You collect                                            dirty syllables in the loving of your pink hands
and the places that will only be clean when you learn to drown.

My eyes are a stencil                      of sleep and the recipe for         tears is a diary in 
my kitchen. You'll have to explain                          the stickiness of whispers in the toy-
box words                         but you must never throw them                    or put them in 
your mouth. They are                   stones and bones.                 And watch for the 
edges                                           of houses             for they can stun you.
In the pictures your fingers will be sticks and your hair will go on forever.

If I cannot sing                    lullabies I will die                  but I will have time to go 
slowly. Soft apocalypse.                Making up the house's mind. The memory of  months 
in water nine months               countless housed in                 water comes back and continues                                 to teach you things you needed             to live to learn.
The nursery has a dull pink rhythm. Listen : sent-i-ment, sent-i-ment.           If you put
on a new dress it will be wet within a breath. A stain spreads over  your breast like the

map of an undiscovered country traced with a fingertip in damp sand where only the two 
of you live.

You are the sealer                       of spells and the maker of strange deals in milk and intimidation.                          The stairs outside his bedroom croak like souls 
when you step on                          their uncovered faces. Laying him            down is a 
form of breathing and a form                                                                      of loss. 
Lullaby him with the dream of sleep                                           that you will not get as 
you listen to him sleeping. He pulls                              the knitted softness into his 
mouth. When you come to him later                        his fingers have come out through 
the spaces.
 

  © 2000 



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