The morning’s horn extended a palmful of
sand. I felt a dry sprig on my face, frozen
moment, moment’s omen, sleep’s curtain
kicked
on top. I’d forgotten more about time than
I could know I got up knowing, Cold Duck
time the time I knew best, head bad beyond
all
hope. Hand spread, sand uncupped, hand
extended . . . In the hollow of the morning’s horn
I felt empty, crook of an arm around my back,
I
couldn’t say whose, wishing it was my father,
someone I knew at least, again I was the
abandoned one. Hand extended, fingers flat,
sand
falling, the morning’s horn’s hollow abiding,
unbeknown, something inside it unbound . . .
Whatever I thought I knew gone by the way-
side, what I knew about time I got up knowing
bet-
ter. There’d been a fight between Robert and
Mary was all I knew, names more echo than
ever, names meaning late not meaning to. It
was
actually I was only pretending, what I knew so
simple I’d gotten weary. Make-believe made it
more real . . . We sat on the couch eating crab
re-
membering Robert and Mary, snug in the cul-
de-sac, Duck weathering well, real, we wanted
to say, beyond compare. Beyond repair I heard,
mis-
heard, we sat on the couch, copacetic, nothing
such occurring to us . . . “Down at the café,” we
made fun of the eldren, “down on Fourth by
Bris-
tol, tore
up”
•
“Ripped,” I’d say later, newly Dogon, calling
them the dead dying of thirst . . . Ripped word-
skirt, altar cloth, tears enough to drown in.
Twin-
ship, tearing, read it, wept . . . The morning’s
horn’s hollow so had me I sewed with Crab light,
“Stitch, rhapsodic stitch,” I apostrophized. So
it was and so it went, blocked-out intaglio back
with
a vengeance, Lone Coast imbroglio south of
Lone Coast, they who’d only of late fallen in
with our crew, Robert and Mary’s breakup all
we knew . . . Not since Peter and Melissa had it
been
so, names less address than echo, insides lost,
would-be more than were. Names less than nomina-
tion, they were the kids Huff and Sophia would
’ve
had had they had
kids
