1.

In the kitchen, the school of plates

is, at last, gathered in the shoals of the cabinets.

The oven breathes hot on her neck,

she feeds it a songless bird.

 

The teapot shrieks, a peacock,

her hands lift the angry thing—

headless and spouting into the cup,

an open mouth hunger cannot feed.

 

The television flings shit all over

vacuumed carpets and clean scrubbed walls,

she throttles it with a switch

stands in silence,

barefoot on the carpet’s hairy back.

 

 

2.

The babies’ metal keys

have stopped spinning,

does she know?

My eyes lick her neck, 

I breathe her milk-dreams like a cat,

her hair a nest of nightmares.

 

In the dark, the bed sighs and moans,

the pillows slip from their cases

like the heads of hostages

and while she sleeps

the moon and I

stare at each other.

 

 

 

 

 

Jacob Rakovan is an appalachian writer in exile, a father of five and a resident of Rochester, NY. He has poems appearing or forthcoming in Other, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature,Spindle, Arsenic Lobster, ghoti, Bijou, Anemone Sidecar, and others.