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THE WOOD
1.
A truckload. We stack it.
Mama is yelling. I don't like it.
Picking up the pieces with my left hand,
feeding with the right,
grabbing with my arms cradled, forked.
Looking over the wood to walk,
it's heavy. It's hard. Chunks fall to the ground.
Cedar. Soft. Easy to split if
you know how. I don't, but Clay does.
It's cold. Our breaths steam the air
between the wet blackness of the turned-up
soil of the pea fields in winter wait.
Between, here, on the grass, the
lawn is wet from the rain. The
spongy sod sinks to my step
with a hole in my shoe. The water seeps in.
Mama says, "Pile more wood on."
It's dusk. I reach the concrete floor,
and the barn door swallows me.
The barn is dark with shelves of parts,
shelves of screws, nuts, bolts.
In the first small room there are no windows.
In the second larger room there is
a shelf of fishhooks, baits.
We never go fishing.
2.
A pile of boards rotting in the rain
with weeds growing around by the garden
plots from this spring and summer. Bugs eat,
and worms tunnel through blindly to the mud.
If you cut them in half, they don't die.
Both heal into new worms doubling in your hands,
worms crawling through the dead lumber, so
don't cut them in two.
The threads of the boards are loosening, splintering
on the ground, powdering out, brown
on the grass. I'm picking splinters out. I'm kicking
chunks off. I'm walking on this wood, and it's rocking
from weakness. This must be the way this
square, flat tree is laying down to die its death.
The grass is long. The grass is green.
The worms, the bugs, the rot crawl through the dead.
My mama is dead, rotting in the ground.
She is the building of a living city.
When finished with her--she--her
body will be one with the earth.
Chopping cedar with a sharpened hatchet,
the blade splits the rings with the grain.
Stack it to wait for the fire, to burn it.
Thursday night Clay said, "Go to hell."
Friday morning she took the advice.
3.
I'm grinding the wood, dusting my shoes.
This growth on my back like a mushroom, I try to
feel it. I cannot feel it with my hands,
not with my hands.
I never see it when I turn.
There are these animals we don't see.
They walk behind us when we're alone.
They turn with us. We turn a grave.
To see, I'm carrying a mirror to see
who I am and who I am not.
She stared in the rearview at the ruins of the fire.
She died as Ninespot. She died like a dog.
She was lowered into the earth with the rain.
She'd wanted to be burned.
--David Joseph
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THE WOOD
1.
A truckload. We stack it.
Mama is yelling. I don't like it.
Picking up the pieces with my left hand,
feeding with the right,
grabbing with my arms cradled, forked.
Looking over the wood to walk,
it's heavy. It's hard. Chunks fall to the ground.
Cedar. Soft. Easy to split if
you know how. I don't, but Clay does.
It's cold. Our breaths steam the air
between the wet blackness of the turned-up
soil of the pea fields in winter wait.
Between, here, on the grass, the
lawn is wet from the rain. The
spongy sod sinks to my step
with a hole in my shoe. The water seeps in.
Mama says, "Pile more wood on."
It's dusk. I reach the concrete floor,
and the barn door swallows me.
The barn is dark with shelves of parts,
shelves of screws, nuts, bolts.
In the first small room there are no windows.
In the second larger room there is
a shelf of fishhooks, baits.
We never go fishing.
2.
A pile of boards rotting in the rain
with weeds growing around by the garden
plots from this spring and summer. Bugs eat,
and worms tunnel through blindly to the mud.
If you cut them in half, they don't die.
Both heal into new worms doubling in your hands,
worms crawling through the dead lumber, so
don't cut them in two.
The threads of the boards are loosening, splintering
on the ground, powdering out, brown
on the grass. I'm picking splinters out. I'm kicking
chunks off. I'm walking on this wood, and it's rocking
from weakness. This must be the way this
square, flat tree is laying down to die its death.
The grass is long. The grass is green.
The worms, the bugs, the rot crawl through the dead.
My mama is dead, rotting in the ground.
She is the building of a living city.
When finished with her--she--her
body will be one with the earth.
Chopping cedar with a sharpened hatchet,
the blade splits the rings with the grain.
Stack it to wait for the fire, to burn it.
Thursday night Clay said, "Go to hell."
Friday morning she took the advice.
3.
I'm grinding the wood, dusting my shoes.
This growth on my back like a mushroom, I try to
feel it. I cannot feel it with my hands,
not with my hands.
I never see it when I turn.
There are these animals we don't see.
They walk behind us when we're alone.
They turn with us. We turn a grave.
To see, I'm carrying a mirror to see
who I am and who I am not.
She stared in the rearview at the ruins of the fire.
She died as Ninespot. She died like a dog.
She was lowered into the earth with the rain.
She'd wanted to be burned.
--David Joseph
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