somewhere there's
a poem that is the avoidance
of your aftermath. the trouble
is, feeling like a word
from your own mouth
is real enough. the lobster
sat like a brick on my knife
at our first family dinner, how
else could i be
but silent-- my legs
stretching thick
into daily life, you kept
a sharper focus on the subject
than i could have
imagined, my object
absent handed. i hit
myself on my own head as if
it were a stucco ceiling, wishing hard
for vermont to reject me