THE HURON RIVER THROUGH DEPOT TOWN, YPSILANTI, MICHIGAN

for Ray Mason, 1960-2018

"Looks like you lost weight," I said to Ray.
"Looks like you found it," he said, and  
repeated it, since it was pretty funny
and I laughed, too, but wouldn't have
if it had been anyone else. Then we danced,
a little, near the stage to the free summer
music at the end of Washington Street.
I hadn't seen him much since I left
the pantry where we worked a few years back.
He hugged me, "It hurts me" he had said,
"to see you cry." It was always good
to see Ray. Everyone said it.

The next month we gathered in the cold
at Riverside Park in Ypsitucky, our closed-down-
factory town—his aunt, Miss Pat, and the street people
who had spread the word about his memorial—
and drank, ate potato salad, barbecue, hotdogs
and threw our words into the river, the
PFAS river, dioxane river, the lead river,
to the foaming, stinking river we went in this
poisoned town where Ray, late one night, was
stripped and beaten to death for being black
and thrown into the Huron River and we drowned
our pearls in that river, threw our iridescence,
spit our mouthfuls of joy wrapped in saliva-gloss
after holding burning embers on our tongues
for all these years in the town whose poison
consumes us and now will take our pearls.

__

MY NEIGHBORS' KIDS THIS SUMMER

My womb is an empty television box
sagas, sitcoms and serials lit by imagination alone;
all my children are fiction.

My eggs rolled downhill for forty years
—where was their Sisyphus?
My husband's sperm were valiant,
no doubt, despite their thwarted missions.

Instead of children I carried myself,
started with some promise but faltered.
It baffled my parents, and now they're gone.

I'm some kind of moon
hugging earth and tugging tides
but, see, still spinning, rise and wane
over this planet of children.

Sometimes my gaze is so intense
you can bathe night in it.

Children I didn't want—
you scattered but in my last
phase I hear you chattering
in my front yard.

                          Looking out
the window my husband says,
"A little girl is coming to the door,"
and I open before she knocks.

__

MOTHRA DAYS

The wind net salt strewn love
wanted you between my breasts
where I and I eloped your pearl body.

Between my breasts rocking
love me the wind shifted
salt strewn like I always wanted you

like I always wanted you where I go strewn.
Where I go Mothra the wind shifted salt
I'm eloped

snagged pearl days I always wanted
wind snagged like I wanted
salt eloped rocking breasts between,
I ashes

strewn days
else someone wind strewn days
ashes body net.

Love me unbuttoning my body of days.
The wind rocking fish ashes pearl salt
your pearl I always wanted.

I always wanted Mothra
I go eloped the wind unbuttoning my body,
fish breasts.

You loved unbuttoning
loved to love me go between days
ashes.

The wind shifted, loved someone else.
where in a net you between I and I snagged
Wanted you

You wanted to
ashes you love and
shifted shifted shifted

but I wanted where I go to you
wind pearl
always

eloped days, pearls
unbuttoning
love ashes.

Pearl my always you.
I'm, I go. Shifted you.
Mothra days.

we're body
my always love strewn
a wanted you

we're days unbuttoning
wind eloped you
my always love.

I Mothra
loved salt.
This day the last button.

__

"Mothra Days," is a computer assisted cut-up of original work, influenced by audio collage techniques. Here's a link to a recent audio collaboration between Karen and Ralph, "I Heard about Everything," https://soundcloud.com/publicus/i-heard-about-everything.