A Selection From the Lamont Poet’s Collection, Skirts and Slacks

skirts and slacks

The .32 Special,

its Dutch Masters box,

still in their bedroom

closet, days after

my mother’s death,

plus my father’s

thirty years ago.

I used to practice

disarming, reloading,

putting it in my mouth

for fun. And so,

here it is again,

but (stupid woman,

Great Depression child 

scrolling tens and twenties

in macaroni boxes)

loaded, half-cocked.

Oh yes, shoot the burglar

in the closet, the cat

in heat on the fence,

and Calvin Coolidge. She rose, 

rammy, close to death,

cocked up in bed

as if pulleyed by heaven, 

sometime past midnight.

I was there to watch

her eyes wake for a moment 

enraged and hateful toward me. 

Bone wooled with slights

of flesh, what certainty

in the body at its end?

And between here and there? 

Breath stops, blood fades,

the comic head I’m lifting

from the pillow feels

too merely anatomical 

and heavier than before.

– W.S. Di Piero