As (oh, my darling!) it will be

Poems are arenas staging gladiator
fights: all you do is try to name
the sights and sounds and how
the light strikes from the front rows
of the bleachers or the back rows
where the main event becomes so
small you tend instead to notice who’s

behind, in front and next to you,
thereby to find whole unsuspected
sideshows to enthrall – though all
informed by that faint distant roar
of warring creatures and the crowds
that crave to see more featured every
day and every night: unending flight

of flesh and might into eventual
inevitable breathlessness: discovering
that death is not a fiction when
the final blast and friction of a fist
which rivets general attention in
the place is aimed – as (oh, my
darling!) it will be – at last at your own

face. I dawdle, really, here: throttled
by the fear of entering, re-entering
the dining room to find my staring
sightless mother on her back, mouth
open, slack, with all the contents
of her stomach on her chest. It didn’t
matter that she’d fought her best.


.