Mountain down to damp emerald
moss, wind-bent hemlock,
fragrant duff under tent floor,
fog the metronomic gusts fail to dissolve, we break
out supper—mine lost to memory,
Ted’s pickled herring he gulps
like a seal, the reek
& smacking & cross-eyed, lip-licking
contemplation settling me down
at the formica table cleared
of supper, dishes on the rack,
batch of iced tea brewing, lemons cut,
sugar crock lifted down, me at my place
for reasons long vanished,
my mother with a jar of pigs’ knuckles—
not feet, though feet there were in the clear juice,
skin, too, kin to the well-fattened folds
at my joints—between her planted
elbows, each knuckle brought
to her precise teeth, subjected to her pitiless gaze,
gnawed white, then dropped on a plate—but gnawed
won’t do, nothing will, search long
as I may for what her mouth did
with that embalmed meat, that brined cartilage,
never mind the sound of it—teeth-on-slippery-not-
quite-bone, sound I hear
deeper than the sleeting wind,
the stoned, gobbling friend, the whup-whup
of the blue nylon under which we’ll sleep
till dawn & hunger drive us down
to where we live—for now, anyway,
breakfast almost a guarantee.
