All the Dead Dears

Rigged poker -stiff on her back

With a granite grin

This antique museum-cased lady

Lies, companioned by the gimcrack

Relics of a mouse and a shrew

That battened for a day on her ankle-bone.

These three, unmasked now, bear

Dry witness

To the gross eating game

We'd wink at if we didn't hear

Stars grinding, crumb by crumb,

Our own grist down to its bony face.

How they grip us through think and thick,

These barnacle dead!

This lady here's no kin

Of mine, yet kin she is: she'll suck

Blood and whistle my narrow clean

To prove it. As I think now of her hand,

From the mercury-backed glass

Mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother

Reach hag hands to haul me in,

And an image looms under the fishpond surface

Where the daft father went down

With orange duck-feet winnowing this hair —-

All the long gone darlings: They

Get back, though, soon,

Soon: be it by wakes, weddings,

Childbirths or a family barbecue:

Any touch, taste, tang's

Fit for those outlaws to ride home on,

And to sanctuary: usurping the armchair

Between tick

And tack of the clock, until we go,

Each skulled-and-crossboned Gulliver

Riddled with ghosts, to lie

Deadlocked with them, taking roots as cradles rock.