Thursday, May 23, 2019

The Feast by David Baker


The Feast
 
The moon tonight is
the cup of a
     scar. I hate the moon.
     I hate—more—that scar. My love waited
 
one day, then half
the next. One
     cyst drained of fluid that looked,
     she said, like icing for
 
a cake. Red-
laced, she said, gold,
      tan, thick, rich. Kind of
      beautiful.
 
One cyst
was not a cyst. One
      —small one, hard, its edges jagged—
      like a snow ball.
 
This one scared
the house on-
     cologist into
     lab work: stat.
 
Once the snow melts the birds
will be back.
     Once
     many men were masked
 
in front of their
families. Were gunned down
     to shallow graves, together, there.
     Basra. Kaechon. East
 
St. Louis, Illinois. Nowhere
we don’t know about
     and nothing yet is done.
     This is what we watch while
 
we wait.
Twelve little cysts
     of snow in the red-
     bud. I watched each one, having
 
counted, once more, and then one
more time, as
     the news reports reported
     and the cold early
 
northern wind shook
out there the bare, still-budded small
     bush. Balls of crust shuddered
     in the bush.
 
Birds will be
back as
     though nothing has happened.
     I am here to report that
 
nothing happened. Except
the oncologist said, then,
     benign.
     But now I hate
 
the moon. Hate the scar,
though it shines
     on her breast
     like the moon at my lips.
 

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