Sonogram

I dreamed my mother collapsed inside of me

and nothing else was true.

I was still and I cupped my heart’s stream

into my heart’s mouth and

I could do nothing. 

This is to say I was a child.

Casting nets of silver so you feel

the feeling of

this is my job:  the child is living

and can be named for a dog.

A dog would be pure black emotion.

A terrycloth terror we’ll rub on our bodies

and hold onto for fear of

she was a child.  She was a child.

And in her child she felt her mother’s sadness.

I want to her to feel it

for how can I touch her, the beatitude, the velvet veto.

What hasn’t happened yet.

What it feels like to hold onto the stairs for help.

That’s every story—medea plumming candle.

Dead-rot dog

finking across the need to know.

As I stand in front of the “victim.”

She’s garrulous as we practice on the child

on her dovetail joints that despite everything

thrill and thrill and thrill.