Autobiography 5

Painting by Vargas


AUTOBIOGRAPHY 5


In my silence, a dark scar
Shouts to the closet
Of winter sweaters.

Through a crack in the sidewalk
Her tongue emerged to lick
The blue off the sky.

Now that she is drowned
In the plate glass of downtown,
Her last breath burns holes in my wrists.

Each puff under my aged eyes
Is a pale wall of rosaries
Around the necks of vacant lots.

Wine dug my skin out of the ground,
Found her brown eyes had turned
Into black spots on white dice.

Her goodbye is crawling
On the charred boards
Of burnt river pavilions.


Duane Locke

Posted over on Scars