Jamie Grefe- A Poem

GONE, RISEN, STAY GONE

Kitchen licked: we wake to sour sleep-thoughts and ache
when throats burn; acidic sputters swell, and men nibble teeth around
your inked nape, pain inglorious.

So, lay it down, sister: cross-legged, soft sleeper, train tracks

of Old China: grey brick to brick, mountain heap,
slats of snow, the doom: those precise thirty-six hours when
the train sank back to Beijing like a cow to slaughter.

And the kitchen tunnel, mind’s vortex, a spaceship deserted in the Yellow 

River, rotten mist. Into the wife’s slumbering night-visions of a half-daughter. 

Until then, again, we say good-bye, kiss lips and call later. I’ll run to the bus, 

run to the train, run to school, to the river and back again;
our chosen home is ten legs long plus mine: twelve steps, two hands,
one bed: gone, risen, stay gone.