Blood wants an angel but all it has is Monday,
my mother
three states away,
left arm snaked and buttonholed
for dialysis.
What do they dream—mother
and blood—those long hours
churning?
Permeable membrane there same as here:
potassium expelled, magnesium,
wreckage of husband,
father.
What is collected: reverse Eden
in a jar.
Just 5 seconds ago I batted away a honey bee.
Now it’s back,
my kneecap sweet
as rhododendron.
The bee’s flight: long trail of zigging then on a
rope
to the hive,
its news: nectar everywhere.
My mother purrs, I
purr in a drift
of consciousness—
blood spurting
in packets the size of a bee
or hanging
in those death red capillarial nets—human
torsos—
I saw once
polymered to nothingness.
We breathe, the ribs
expand,
the living lungs inflate.
That perverse museum—
she’s going to die,
I’ll have to watch—
like so much shaken pollen
I’ll need a trowel as wide as my hand
to get one clear cylinder of gold,
that thicket
of wild flower—her glory days—
soon coating my throat.
Throat wants to say something,
blood and honey,
it always does,
but it’s dead air now
inside the daylight.
Heat crowning scalp, bees in the yard
like weed fluff,
bands of silence.
Mother leaning back, idling,
but still pegged down.
Bees for an instant
hovering in the shape of a mouth.
DENNIS HINRICHSEN is the author of six books of poetry. His most recent are Rip-tooth, winner of the 2010 Tampa Poetry Prize, and Kurosawa’s Dog, winner of the 2008 FIELD Poetry Prize. He lives and teaches in Lansing, Michigan.
