Poetry from Lost Roads PublishersFive poems from Ex Voto
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The untying of a knot Divorce, how ugly. Ugly all the people. Brutal their faces and stunned, crude. How stupid the broken family like so many dropped crates of gaily painted china bought on holiday when you imagined the meals at home, at home, the wildflower plates in the kitchen sun, saucers for peaches and ginger cream, rainy afternoon with Chopin shaking the ficus, the record with the deep scratch but you don't care, and the line of lemon trees up the drive, yellow, yellow, the right faces, mirror-to-mirror. One nail drives out another. How far to reality from here? Names as close as your own veer into other trajectories. You enter a din, you're late, main course already served. And where were you on the day everyone remembers? How sentimental the future is, all unearned. But the future, you say, will have in it me, me, me. Wasn't it sad when that great ship went down, hit the bottom? You are the first family to fall. This is a small sloop and a long reach. Quick-witted, you fit yourself to the wind. You say the Gulf is silky, aquamarine. You are seen, suddenly by the sun. You, with similar fingerprints, you, who walked up the rue du Paradis. You're the short division of all, owner of four forks, four chairs. Mayes home page
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