Rodney Jehu

she squinted at us in the gathering dust and trapped a few hard-won tears in her crow’s feet her white hair flailing wildly her ululations escaped as she twirled and we knew in a flash that the dancer never really left — our village was not yet ridiculous enough for a dry joke her toes rapidly pitter-pattered pocking the hard ground that had become cracked like old parchment bearing a fading contract she called us wordlessly into the growing fray and we began to clap faster as she slapped her chest and grunted sharp staccato ugh-ugh-ughs that whistled though her last teeth she coughed and spat and then plucked a wind string that led back to her first dance her knees knocked together and then she flinched with a HA! and then the robin’s egg broke and the sky burst over us she took her last bow in the crashing applause plunged backwards through the falling curtains and exhaled fragrant petrichor

marriage: –bedsheet tug-of-war (brrr) –your alarm saving mine (always) –bathroom time (should i leave it running?) –have-a-nice-day-kisses (running late!) –your hair on my jacket (10 am meeting) –your message: smiling pile of poo (tmi) –crowded 6 train back (homeward!) –food (…i’ll get the dishes hun) –middle couch cushion (jenga feet) –existential dread (whatchawannawatch?) –bed time (COME.TO.BED!) –super serious life-talk (can we, like, tomorrow?) –…i love you too…too much (no…don’t say that…it’s true…how much…this much!!!)dedicated to Ruthie — my heart’s rest, the dream of my past, and my waking joy

nothing is a thing that wasn’t first a process that wasn’t first a butterfly before it was pinned to cork parades and much too much to grasp, the living are not among the known decency asks sometimes for ignorance and shrouds lepidopterists are a callous breed

We have learned to love The edges of things— Beginnings and ends, Mirages, Spooky apparitions at a distance, That closer inspection Dispels— And forget how everything is contiguous soup Which drowns all meaning. Human ingenuity is this: Draw a line to make one two; Create a cage, invent a freedom; Carve me, out of us.