88: coma, canto 31

I walk outside on legs of fragile reeds.

canto 31

Henry had a bird on his hand,
that fluttered when he moved
his fingers through Lucy’s
hair now dyed red,
the color of the small bird
made by the discolor
on Henry’s hands,
while my father
wondered on his new bed
at the strange itch
in his knuckles
and my mother,
said to herself:
if I had just let him
give the thing away
goddamn you.

Thor taps on the glass.
He says: when I get out
I’m gonna cut off your
fucking fingers, too.
For fucking my Lucy,
for taking her;
I’ll hunt to whatever
lake you try to hide
in, wherever you go,
and I turned back to him,
where he sat
behind the glass,
his body lesser,
the hair cut to stubbing,
his big knuckle rapping
the glass again,
he said:
sorry about him, anyway,
he didn’t do nothing to me.

and I wonder
if I should’ve said:
it’s not me who’s touching
Lucy, fool, thief,
that in the koran
the hands, it is said,
may bear witness
against the user,
for what the hands make
will become evidence
of the maker’s making.

but I refused
to change the image
in him of Lucy and me,
me and Lucy because
I sensed a mission in him,
a mission to destroy me,
this murderer and thief
behind the glass,
perhaps not eating as well
as he was used.

I ask him how he’d been.
He says: should be obvious
in this place.
I told him
he’d probably
never see the sun
in the park,
the sun from the mountain,
the sun from a car,
the sun on the rise
or the sun on the fall
and that my father’s
hand was like a club now,
with just two fingers
remaining but somewhat
chewed up, healing though.

he said: taking your stuff
brought me bad luck;
because you’re cursed.
And now I’m here
and the trial won’t go well,
I reckon, he said.

no, I said:
the sun from your little
window is all you’ll know of it
maybe till you die.
He crashed the window, then,
hammering at the glass
with the meat parts
of his palm,
which is what the guards
had been waiting for, I assume,
for they tackled him,
subdued him,
and dragged him
and as they dragged
him he called:
I’ll hunt you
or hire someone
to hunt. Yes, hire.
Look for peace if you can.

days horribly wet
to come. In the showers,
persistent and loud out the windows,
my mother gave away, sold,
and hid all the sharp things,
the sheers and the knives,
the saws and the axes,
for fear of their chaos
and when she brought
my father home
she put him to bed
where he lay for sleeping
and closed the curtains
to mute the rain and thunder
crash, closed the door
slowly, and made soup.

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