Into the yawning silence and Lullaby

Into the yawning silence

Between thoughts and stolen glances,

love wants to be fed, boil into the mouth

swell the veins down the neck, tattoo

the burning chest and coil like baby snake

into the fork of the stomach. It craves to fatten

inside your body, the ribs of a starved boy

haunting its breath, its face the memory

of a black sea, limbs thinner than moonbeams,

bones eager to be cracked and sprout like

plastic roses stuck in a dusty vase on the black

and white TV, its nocturnal wail crushing eardrums,

this luminous fish of a love, how its good hands slip

like squares of soap into this jewel of slumber

that is your heart. Nothing hums better than silence.

Lullaby

My son lies on my belly, together we are wrapped

in slumber under god’s loose skirts. We bleed

electricity and the fabric sparkles and cracks

and the echo tickles our throats and he and I

watch the winter moon grinning down the tall

window, we steal away its beam, chew the shaft,

tastes like honeyed slivers, no words are needed,

we are brimming with rinds of language, the coin

tumor under my left breast milking my tongue, his,

tuning to the way motherhood grows a third shadow,

hush, child, every mourning shifts into morning.