Death by Supernova
Rebuke waste. Empty the heart
of its odd preserves.
I would have my heart
burst. The sentimental
Manischewitz in a ventricle’s pantry,
the unused birthday candles
gumming up the far side
of the aorta’s lazy Susan—
Throw them, throw every accelerant
on the pyre.
I want, in going,
to anneal the simple elements—
hydrogen and hunger—
into the heavier,
into carbon and love,
into what we need for life.
Little Mirror
Before it was a mirror
it was a photograph.
And before that it was
a layered page—
iron under lacquer
under emulsion—
and light, waiting to lick
the silver from the sheet.
Small and serious girl with bare shoulders,
hid halfway down a deck of tintypes:
dust made your gaze as indefinite
as if you'd been crying, so I made
this mistake: I wiped your eyes.
The mirror is no worse
for having held
another face
more resolutely first.
A smudge of ghost
masks nothing;
it is, in fact, the aura
of life making room.