Sarah Robinson Threatening to Leap They printed you picture Black and white smudgy ink Page ten of the Daily News I'm not going to pretend I understand I'm not going to ask why Under the caption "Saved from himself" You had been pulled down On the Right side of the railing of that silver monstrosity of a bridge You legs in the air Like you were trying to get your head Through the pavement to be born again Confining the Land My mother took me to an overgrown Quaker cemetery last year and there he was- a veteran, a drunk, and a stone mason in these fields, in these forests he worked, created boundaries he hauled stones in wheelbarrows in the thick, oppressive days of the darkest summer in rusty September, in the white wasteland of January. in bitter, clay earth he earned his pay after the war, a changed man. he worked alone out here heaving stones into place, mortaring them, adjusting them so that the angles melded and were perfect. in the starkness of November, he worked alone created boundaries, as he always had walls as high as a cow's chest and then he went home washed his scarred hands of mortar the late night moon gibbous and bright through the dusty window pane the house silent as he stare into the unfathomable depths of the mirror be kind/night rain the moon hangs bald in the sky luminous, fleshy as bare thighs be kind and let it sleep next to you tonight and every evening when you are alone. I don't know the bottom, but I was kind and let it sting me once or twice. . . kamikaze raindrops crash beyond my room?s walls when it rains tiny Japanese men, listen to me, be kind open you mouth and give their poor corpses a proper burial- the pink hollow of your stomach is comfort to dead eyes/ the rain was born in Japan little children, healthy little children they were once. beneath the moon, bright fish they ripen for deaths in battle and in their living rooms. poor babies. soldiers drilled to burst from clouds dark arrows that fly straight into the red I don't fucking care, you said they steer their bodies towards the earth in thin, bright seams, pointed like tiny silver aircraft metallic clicks and clacks solidify into song soldiers that die on my lawn on not given medals or burials, they splat flat on the ground in wet streaks, their guts grease the grass after the storm, I'm sleeping with myself, outside the voices of crows lonely on the damp wind reach my bed be kind, open the window and let the cries drench your face. this is the blood of the dead. Heart Attack Humming is a primitive sort of sound not the mindless noise my mother makes as she husks corn, slices tomatoes but the terrible, throbbing, vibrations you feel innately, rather than by ear I sense it sometimes the sound blood makes as it eases uncertainly through congested veins. I dreamed I had a heart attack you dragged me by the hair to the hospital all the way there, I was cognizant of the wild cadence of the beats they tried to locate my heart and could not; sent me home bewildered it thumped and banged violently against my rib cage it's there, rusty and huge it drips water, quivering and whistling like an old washing machine it lies in wait for me I've seen a real heart before briefly, behind ribs cracked and blanched beneath ripped and folded gray furry skin with unusual anguish I sobbed when the small, inert body was wrapped in plastic and unceremoniously cast into the vegetation at the side of the road In Maryland when I was twelve my own heart retreated as we drove past the dusty farms the haggard women, the thirsty brown grass as I remembered the tiny heart we'd left behind how red it was still warm in its nest of bone