a prose ballad
 

i only held it once but thought about it often as you think about those times when your life had stood both loaded & unloaded

One brother knew of its existence having seen it where it languished in the famed green storage unit from which it had been transferred to the bank-box but we never quite knew when

Information our father had & something he was squeamish about or proud of at the same time the way Protestants are about genitals

We believed it was a Luger—maybe taken from a soldier—in the War our father trained for but didn’t ever get to because he was wounded in the knee—“sustained” is the word they use—sustained a wound—in infantry maneuvers before his men were mostly killed after D-Day—

When his ashes in the desert grave were lying we took the weapon from the bank-box

i put it quickly in my handbag to get it past the teller—the holster was the smoothest leather—brown & heavy —the yawning L-shape of the Luger Google says Georg Luger designed in 1898 —the holster smooth as the jackets of German soldiers in the movies & what had they done to make the cowhide smooth like that & what had they done to the cow

We thought of burying it in the desert but if you Google burying a firearm it changes to a search for buying a firearm

You can also look up how to load a semi-automatic weapon on YouTube where a white man with thick hands & a wedding band shows you how to check for rounds in what order & tells you how to handle it with your dominant hand

We couldn’t take it to the cops even in my handbag though Arizona is open carry & you can take it anywhere in public but the cops can shoot you if you take your gun to their station

One young Tucson cop named Matt agreed to come to us & checked the magazine & said it was unloaded— looked upon us with excruciatingly mild pity — said this relic might be worth some money & stroked it the way some boys do

i couldn’t tell what the brothers were thinking— it felt like a tragedy but reversible—our father’s ghost stood like a tall working summer like Hamlet’s father’s ghost appearing only in the day & good naturedly telling people not do the killing but still trying to control the actions of the play

You can think about ghostly word weapons nonstop Let’s just take a shot at it She was going great guns He loved her but couldn’t quite pull the trigger Better to just bite the bullet Kill an hour or two

& for some reason maybe sorrow for our father’s power/lack of power i felt a twinge when my brother whisked the tiny heavy out of there —my life had stood a secret little hiddenly shameful semi-automatic firearm & When at night Our good day done i guard my Master’s head

My younger brother sold it for $600 at a Tucson gun shop—one of those outfits where the master paces behind the counter offering advice on collecting & is so proud of his stash

It was a Tuesday i think—a Tuesday inside history where America is lost—& what should we do with the cash

    KLYTAIMESTRA:

In prayerful, rational geometry

his arrow arced

but just—a kill—
through heaven’s rolled, impersonal blue,

arriving beyond view
before the thought of it.

The deer kicked without purchase
in the air
so, the further out she ran,
she laid right there

before he raised a pole

a little taller

than a daughter
on a pile of oiled wood
might stand.
            
               •

    KLYTAIMESTRA:

On his cup
the murex —

a spiny conch
as if within the rib complex
of some dissolved

creature
new proprietors
built a calcite beehive tomb

captured in Syrian ivory
and Caucasian tin
that touches between his eyes

each sip axe glint

as naval ships
that lamplight sails
approach the bath

gridded, grouted, fit.

Whose legs submerged waste?

What man’s penis refracted to a boy’s wavers

and in creases of lapped water
winks away?

His own?

Or is he meant to be on board
and then myself in Mycenae

on the outer room’s pisé walls
he storms
décor.

The divorced mother and her divorcing 
daughter. The about-to-be ex-son-in-law 
and the ex-husband's adopted son. 
The divorcing daughter's child, who is

the step-nephew of the ex-husband's 
adopted son. Everyone cordial:
the ex-husband's second wife 
friendly to the first wife, warm

to the divorcing daughter's child's 
great-grandmother, who was herself 
long ago divorced. Everyone 
grown used to the idea of divorce.

Almost everyone has separated 
from the landscape of a childhood. 
Collections of people in cities 
are divorced from clean air and stars.

Toddlers in day care are parted 
from working parents, schoolchildren 
from the assumption of unbloodied 
daylong safety. Old people die apart

from all they've gathered over time, 
and in strange beds. Adults
grow estranged from a God 
evidently divorced from History;

most are cut off from their own 
histories, each of which waits 
like a child left at day care. 
What if you turned back for a moment

and put your arms around yours? 
Yes, you might be late for work; 
no, your history doesn't smell sweet 
like a toddler's head. But look

at those small round wrists, 
that short-legged, comical walk. 
Caress your history--who else will? 
Promise to come back later.

Pay attention when it asks you
simple questions: Where are we going?
Is it scary? What happened? Can
I have more now? Who is that?

That Sunday at the zoo I understood the child I
never had would look like this: stiff-fingered
spastic hands, a steady drool, and eyes in cages
with a danger sign. I felt like stone myself
the ancient line curved inward in a sunblind
stare. My eyes were flat. Flat eyes for tanned
young couples with their picture-story kids. Heads

turned our way but you’d learned not to care. You
stood tall as Greek columns, weather-streaked
face bent toward the boy. I wanted to take his hand,
hallucinate a husband. He whimpered at my touch.
You watched me move away and grabbed my other
hand as much in love as pity for our land-locked
town. I heard the visionary rumor of the sea. What

holds the three of us together in my mind is something
no one planned. The chiseled look of mutes.
A window shut to keep out pain. Wooden blank of doors.
That stance the mallet might surprise
if it could strike the words we hoard for fears
galloping at night over moors through convoluted bone.
The strange uncertain rumor of the sea.