Mila Rae Mancuso - Four Poems
The Little Faces
await mother at the table, plopped
up on their big chairs, smiling,
humming, nibbling untoasted
Wonder Bread, spooning
butter on their tongues.
She races in, greeting those
Little Faces that wait
to be understood —
lips part: taut
like shriveled satin,
scintillating glossy red like
the inside of an eyelid.
My Friend Angelfish
The nurses put him to bed
each week, raising the tubular
tranquilizer to his nose,
breathe in — the rabbit-hole,
and his body, a deflated balloon,
an angelfish on ice, he is
a droopy bellflower, wringing
sanctity from his silvering spine,
he glows indigo, illusive opaline,
my friend spewing verbiage
from Elysium, turning
in his cot, he sings: Everywhere!
Love is Breathing Draftily,
he is as slim as a spoon in that
fat dream, plucking
Agony’s needlework
with a seam-ripper.
heaven was only half as far that night
In the unbuttoned late-light, we perched
like lonely crows on the fire-escape,
watching the alley angels skip
with their petticoats, violet frills
arabesquing in wind, giggles
trailing behind them, how nice
is it to be that way?
i knew better
than to tell you the truth —
your finger cut
a crescent moon
into my thigh;
you make me light-headed,
make me see those stars,
like they were stitched-in
the sky all along.
You and I
are trying our best hand
at conversation, keeping it light,
doing what we must do well: steering clear
of what we'd like to say.
You leave, and the dizzy
stars tatter the curious filaments of
the bedroom, illuminating the air,
still thick with Black Angel’s Death Song
and the giggles —
in the morning, i’ll find them —
still gleaming in their resting place,
a pale reminder of our whole.
In the Junkyard of Heaven
The Eye window-shops for parts
of a new whole, their
departed fingers pluck
limbs from the pile,
feeling for the smoothest skin.
A delicate left-hand flicks
the final touches of his next masterpiece,
a portrayal of a right leg
practicing hopscotch backwards.
By memory, the hand imparts the scenery
of a Stop & Shop --
the Leg, hopping crookedly in a cowboy
boot, masters the elegance of
breaking his mother’s back.