My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek 
still burning.

Every time I open my mouth my teeth reveal
more than I mean to. I can’t stop tonguing them, my teeth.
Almost giddy to know they’re still there (my mother lost hers)
but I am embarrassed nonetheless that even they aren’t
pretty. Still, I did once like my voice, the way it moved
through the gap in my teeth like birdsong in the morning,
like the slow swirl of a creek at dusk. Just yesterday
a woman closed her eyes as I read aloud, and
said she wanted to sleep in the sound of it, my voice.
I can still sing some. Early cancer didn’t stop the compulsion
to sing but
there’s gravel now. An undercurrent
that also reveals me. Time and disaster. A heavy landslide
down the mountain. When you stopped speaking to me
what you really wanted was for me to stop speaking to you. To
stifle the sound of my voice. I know.
Didn’t want the quicksilver of it in your ear.
What does it mean
to silence another? It means I ruminate on the hit
of rain against the tin roof of childhood, how I could listen
all day until the water rusted its way in. And there I was
putting a pan over here and a pot over there to catch it.

There are no angels       yet
here comes an angel       one
with a man's face         young
shut-off         the dark
side of the moon         turning to me
and saying:        I am the plumed
                            serpent       the beast
                            with fangs of fire   and a gentle
                            heart

But he doesn't say that       His message
drenches his body
he'd want to kill me
for using words to name him

I sit in the bare apartment
reading
words stream past me        poetry
twentieth-century rivers
disturbed surfaces        reflecting clouds
reflecting wrinkled neon
but clogged        and mostly
nothing alive left
in their depths

The angel is barely
speaking        to me
Once in a horn of light
he stood       or someone like him
salutations in gold-leaf
ribboning from his lips

Today again        the hair streams
to his shoulders
the eyes reflect      something
like a lost country       or so I think
but the ribbon has reeled itself
up
    he isn't giving
or taking any shit
We glance miserably
across the room       at each other

It's true       there are moments
closer and closer together
when words stick       in my throat
                                          'the art of love'
                                          'the art of words'
I get your message Gabriel
just        will you stay looking
straight at me
awhile longer