/merrillcole/

 

His great-aunt said she understood:

these were mouth-marks the blind angels left,

as they whirred against the walls,

voices stiff as engraving,

unable to evoke a door.  Something opens

with small stings, like the shuttle of glasses.

As if the background of laughter

were painted slap-dash, it becomes

almost obscene, bathes the walls,

a flimsy fog through which anyone

could see, or the slowest asthmatic breathing —

  

And the search for a break, the leak

 in the lead-lined holding tank of stars —

his skin branded by the angels' impossibility.

 

Later he searched for evocative headstones,

unequivocal positions for again and O.

Antidotes for claustrophobic jokes, for toasts

to a happiness no one could bear.

Aunt Bell loudly asked, “Is the torture

the laughter, or is it torture to laugh?”

 

Locked in the coldest room, practicing

its reticence, the glazed look he cannot

fit his face into, he tries to close off

the night's white-washed sobbing, its cries

that convulsed from false renunciation

to delight.  Behind curtains too heavy

to lift, a manic piano won't stop:

its keys strike down like a person

choking, and continuing to choke.

  

And he dreams of an ocean,

a loud ocean of glasses still empty

and beckoning to be filled with something,

some redness to line what can't be shown,

a tangible poison, a stain.

 

New Writing: The International Journal of the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing 3:2 (November 2006): 123.