Occupations

poem #96

Night, The Little Chapel, Guernsey. photo by the author

---

The war of hands rages past the door;
and families after the door, in unbodied houses,
cannot scream having come open on waking —
airless courtyards where shadows cower.
The war closes over the coin, the coin’s reflection,
antlered and kinged money in the low throne of the palm;
but the war prior to the doorframe was 
a politics of prudence, balanced over shoulders —
now the siblings wander in and out of undug trenches,
thin-armed, patrolling in warpaint mixed out of light
into each other’s lines. After the door,
the war of hands annexes skull, annexes spine;
old rituals of war remain open, half-done, coins slotted
into eyes, eaten, antlers in the stomach, crowned the feet,
awaiting final flourishes like victims of a music; 
whatever its new shape, the thing is led
into the cavity where once the mind was throned;
then the tongue, tired herald, tied prisoner 
without a face, old friend, toeing giddy
at the saw-brim of the uncapped head,
goes drowning in fresh darkness there.

---