Gillian Conoley
My Mother Moved My Architect

My mother moved
my architect
cutting out newspaper clippings
making the life-long collage
had I sense
I would have
papered the hallways with
instead it is an ephemeral art

a flaxen gene
her left shoulder
out of its socket

will remain that way
rest of days unto nights

what is mentally important

my mother moved my architect
I do not forget
unworn enormous straw hats having gone up in fire
butter churn, too,
a drummer drumming

differently in the hallway all years lead up the stairs
the lingerie

drying on the stairwell
the gait
got the girl in it

The Depression was in the Depression glass

the Carnival plate poised in the window
to seal the light said look

close to see your face
look in the face of your mother
giving way to continuance

redwolfing each nasal fold
and the pearly restitch      in the forehead      what happened there

my mother made
my amazon stockings

made my word order
accordian back through the binoculars

the woody tendrils of the wisteria
a delicacy on the white pickets
sharpening up               the honeybee riding on that futurity

once my mother’s face
spoke it said      let’s tear up
our birth certificates and be transubstantiated

make of this world
a planetarium,      ultradense,

what the Big Dipper said to the Little Dipper:

my burial plans include      a new species but first

scatter my ashes
over the grave of your father
be sure to get the right grave
cemetery folks will tell you
this is illegal so do it at night

Midsummer my preference. Box turtle
so still as to look
dead in the middle of the lake.

If one could imagine
a mother between two swans.

Pomegranate      persimmons      shimmering trail of snail
copper nail in the earthen
dank shed
The miscellany began      the perplexity

this drawer
is for kitchen
scissors

peel a grape for a glass eye
bleach kills mildew

toothpaste if no bleach
a kindness brought the pie

I do think at one point
as a woken child I saw
Bonnie and Clydes’ car
sleek and perfect      I then understood
God-speed

and if there were any morals I would take Thoreau’s

I do not know how the coins got tossed up like that
to fall where they did.
nor the golden piss

          made sheerest.      relieved from a nude.

Look into your mother’s face
fount yourself there

forget redemption.
If you want softness, wash your hair in rainwater.

If you crave guidance,
be Virgil to the Dante: you didn’t act this way in the other pit.

My mother moved my architect
bade fair
she slipped the bolt
upright
like the great sea chest
none of us
had ever seen open

My mother moved my architect
she made it pump and eat

She made this lake
where I come to

over-identify with the dead and call

Dear Echo to my echo,

She made me nude   ––sheer––   and nude again
She made it interesting right up to the end

So that
I have to think what is with

these two heads blurred and blended, thin
curtain not seen back through

Tail lights,
white gloves with the green stain

as you entered the sunless woods
best to keep the road a little feral where the color is

                    and your world part dust
fed and unkilled      I am not through
being a poet or a being

What fallen ash
is the power to live

what pituitary
is the grace to keep
doing so

and what good
is temporary measure––

did you say thank you      and were you      thanking