Ram

I live with my mother
who is earless and brown.
She’s lying in the dark again,
foaming at her new book. She
tells me it’s her worst, but on
drugs we don’t yet have.

Mama, I say.

Last night my dreams did me in.
Left a party with a stomach full of light.
Drove my red car up the hill
where Edith lived. A banner
sank on my eyes through
the jellied thunder,
lightning put its finger on me
and I died.

It could be nothing. Then she stops
and listens for the insects
spreading their legs.

My crickets are gone
she says, giving me a look.

I say, Mama.

Outside, I put my thumbs
to the sweating moon and its timber
gives when I press. I have named its
landscape for her:

in this canyon your crickets are sleeping
            in this crater your smoothwinging birds eat suet
            in this canyon I poured your husband’s whiskey

She is in the window
posing, forgetting
the edges of the world.

When I walk back in
she is happy
to talk.