The Fall
A stage, a fall, a
distant warning
echoed by a backyard
dog’s howl
refrains from a
two-year-old in red tights
looking like veins in the
tops of her black patent leather shoes
molten,
seamed, flaring
She still can’t know why
Santa changed his clothes
in the women’s bathroom
crushed red velvet and
cotton balls draping
over a stall like the
center of a cherry cream
oozing
into a box
More than the broken lip
and bumped forehead
she remembers a mother
sewing a pink Easter cape
for a child who loved
dirt so much
she found it in the
middle
of
a white cotton sheet
She broke another tooth
falling
off a church wall, concrete
turning
white sharp and flat as
if she were playing
all three movements of
Clemente’s Sonatina
to
come back to middle C
Rome falls in the book of
Revelation
horsemen of the
apocalypse like that spring
in Bradford Woods when a
Sunday school teacher
thought teens needed to
learn about hell
instead
of Clint Eastwood painting a town red
She forgot about that
first day
in the Presbyterian
Church basement
when strangers oohed and
awed
over an itchy cast from
the boys in Florida
a
pancake toss to the ground
This is what you say
when a pastor prays for
you
while you bow over a
sprawl of skirt
clutching frozen meat in
a throbbing hand
on
an uneven kitchen floor.
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