Remember Me
Mary Ann McFadden
O god of damnation, lizard god eaten alive each day by the cat
and your guts ground into the carpet, or flung O god of abandonment
into a corner, god of stench, god of retribution
warm and soft in my paper napkin, tossed in the waste basket, carried out
with crumbs and paint flakes, fruit skins and onion husks,
nail parings and hairs fished from drains, with crushed bugs
and blooded swatted stinging things, O god that gives and takes away,
forget me in your pain, turn your face from me in your suffering,
close your eyes upon me in the furnace of midday
as you begin to rot, or in the tepid rain.
When ants deliver your flesh to their queen,
when your acids leak into dirt, when your frail bones fall into calcium
and enter the clear blood of plants,
when you are sipped at last to the top of the tree, think of me, O infant,
when the brown moth alights on you, and you give thanks
0 god of the one everlasting touch, 0 breath remember me.
Mary Ann McFadden is the author of Eye of the Blackbird published by Four Way Books. She received degrees from Occidental College and New York University. Her poems have appeared in Kestrel, The American Voice, Nimrod, Southern Poetry Review, Kayak and other publications. She has lived in Mazatlan, Mexico, since 1998.
Copyright ©2000 Mary Ann McFadden