The Art of Unselfing

The mind’s black kettle hisses its wild

exigencies at every turn: The hour before the coffee

                               and the hour after.

Penscratch of the gone morning, woman

a pitched hysteria watching the mad-ant scramble,

                               her small wants devouring.

Her binge and skin-thrall.

Her old selves being shuffled off into labyrinths,

                               this birdless sky a longing.

Her moth-mouth rabble unfacing

touch-and-go months under winter, torn letters

                               under floorboards,

each fickle moon pecked through with doubt.

And one spoiled onion. Pale Cyclops

                               on her kitchen counter

now sprouting green missives,

some act of contrition; neighbor-god’s vacuum

                               a loud rule thrown down.

Her mother now on the line saying too much.

This island is not a martyr. You tinker too much

                               with each gaunt memory, your youth

and its unweeding. Not everything blooms here

a private history — consider this immutable. Consider

                               our galloping sun, its life.

Your starved homesickness. The paper wasp kingdom

you set fire to, watched for days until it burnt a city in you.

                               Until a family your hands could not save

became the hurricane. How love is still unrooting you.

And how to grow a new body — to let each word be the wild rain

                               swallowed pure like an antidote.

Her mother at the airport saying don’t come back.

Love your landlocked city. Money. Buy a coat.

                               And even exile can be glamorous.

Some nights she calls across the deaf ocean to no one

in particular. No answer. Her heart’s double-vault

                               a muted hydra.

                               This hour a purge

of  its own unselfing.

                               She must make a home of it.