Despondent

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I’m feeling grim. I’ve Churchill’s black dog 
spreading like Rorschach’s inkblot.
I watch it move, seek its motivation.
I want to learn the bones, sinews, 
muscles, its sire and dam, 

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                                             its lineage. 
I want to understand the way it creeps 
over me, wraps its paws around my mouth 
to silence me, prevent my one successful 
antidote—to describe the dog, feel its heft. 

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My Life As A Cabbage

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                          For LH

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My parents said I was a cabbage,
mistook the solid, stolid sphere 
for dullness, vacuity. For me, inside, 
I told myself to douse the regenerative 
flame of my fury, became a ball 
of quashed anger, veins bulging.  
They taught me not to show it. 
So I drew my crinkled leaves 
about my capacious heart and became 
that cabbage. I watch my exemplar, 
learn to hold others gently in my arms 
as cabbage leaves hold meat and rice. 
I still curl up sometimes. Find me,
round, pale green, rigid.
 

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Abandonment 

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When you have, yet again, forgotten to glance 
at the list on the back door or at the stack 
of taxes still standing exactly where they were, 
two months ago, I imagine abandoning you,

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just walking out. When I pass the neighbor's 
garage, doors rotted off years ago, 
there's a blue recliner, sitting askew, by itself 
near the garbage can, reminding me each time.

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Our friend, Jessie, decamped from her husband, 
just packed her overnight bag and left, 
having, for years, folded and stored 
her growing piles of resentment.

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But I can't do it, can't leave you, the kids 
forever hating me. Then there's you, 
sometimes not remembering, and never 
understanding, what has happened.