Where We Slept Together

Frank Stanford

I open the doors of my house at night
I latch the screens

Allegory of love
Like a dog shaking all over
Like a bite that itches six inches deep

My old radio is like a toothache
Someone had in summers past
Another place set at the table
There are no longer any shotguns or guitars
In my house

There is a lotion for the hands

Each blister another
Blood-shot moon

A yawn a blessing in disguise
A branch where a bush grows
Its thorns
Allegory of love

There are bookshelves I threw together
I took the lumber
From a horse thief's barn

Go back

And there are books the dead light their stoves with
Books howling like pines on a ridge
Cats in heat

Deserted and cold
Like a handgun or a spoor
A gar looking for a wife in a swamp

A room where a raped adolescent
Is interrogated
About her past sexual life

Go back
Wearing a hat of smudge candles
Ducking back
Up the fingers of the lake
Like a ring or a cobweb

You can pass my window you can pass
My door
You can step on the blade of my hoe
All these maps
These photographs
I have wasted nails on

The cut lines it took so long to clear
Are growing back
Scars

I have looked for furrows in the dust
On the banister
And long hair in the bed

Scabs like butterflies
Standing up for the flag
Rocks in the garden of love

The clouds are like fat grandmothers
Before they were mothers
Getting ready for a dance

All these spools of barbed-wire
I meant to put up
When the orchard was mine

I'm sore from mending
Small holes with tissue
Allegory of love

The rented tomb
Like a sour mash
Brewing in the ditch

They're snoring underwater
Theytre droning like ships departed
From the black holes of space

In the morning I'm going
To leave
A bottle on the stump

Like thunderclouds
And packages of blood
The seeds in the hardware store

Like a stew for flies
It boils down
To a slop jar at the foot of this bed

Ginny Stanford