Dog Euthanasia

here are the ashes of my mother’s hands. wear them

as daring barrettes. mercy hair. like god grilling

on easter. can hands be womb-less

if they’ve delivered countless babies? mewling ones

with deformed paws. tails bent like birdbaths

after baptism. her car littered

with anesthetic needles. kids joking about heroin.

add an e and you don’t get the women

in my family. we slide through the hips

of the dead story. laughing. throw cinnamon over

our shoulders like incense. here in this attic.

raspberry stains on my thumbs. she knows

what I would have killed to never watch her. she practices

departure well. who do I break for her.

Twenty-Fifth Birthday

A koi fish buries herself

between the pond’s

surface, her burbling backside

a language hole. I want to be her

big spoon. Trust her

destruction, all forms of intention,

like an orange making love

to both her pulp & juice jive, pout

& bushy bramble. There is no cake

for me here. Just an answer

crowd surfing its own

question, my hands firecrackers

in a downpour, a koi leaping

in defiant & ordinary stillness.