Was She Quite Thin When She Died?

Round Lake

The night I fucked him he pined
for good weather and his baby
on a boat. She slipped
from his fingers, you know.
The boat went quick left,
baby flew right and over,
sank, never-found.

I slept with him anyway,
folded and angled across
a blank bed. He flushed,
finished and took out the trash.
I heard him clamor in the yard.
There are still anchors in him.
There are babies stuck in the sand.

Twenty

Count the number of bruises:
sweet blue bruises, over-ripe
thumbprints and ashen
smudges speckling your legs.

At twelve my father’s mother
quit school. At twelve my
father quit sonhood, made
his own money, built a bedroom
in the basement.

These stains scar, they
match: half-moon crescents
pressed in the thighs, passed
and shared like thick hair,
blue eyes, a heart

palpitation. At ninety
my father’s mother complains
he doesn’t call. At twenty
my father taught her to ride
a bike. It’s hard to say
if she fell.