Get Over Times

Ma’s been bleeding a lot

lately, enough to fill

a bathtub,

a blender,

and fourteen shot glasses.

Every night she soaks in her sheets,

a thick mat of blood pudding.

I was cleaning

documents out from under her bed,

they were black,

and crumbled between my fingers.

Ma’s been bleeding a lot,

her body seems to be pulling away from itself,

and she can’t sleep.

The dogs keep her up at night,

junkyard hounds 

sounding off one after another.

Like mousetraps.

Like car alarms.

Like murder.

Strangling themselves

with lengths of white rope.

Ma’s been bleeding a lot,

enough to kill her,

enough to kill her and everyone,

even the tough m***********s

with a huge squat necks

like hulls,

and gigantic jugulars.

With gruesome feet.

Loathsome fingers.

Horrible knuckles,

and skin,

too much skin.

Too dry.

Too red.

Too rough,

like low grade lumber.

Ma married a tough m**********r

like that.

He wasn’t a good man,

but he was a man,

and he was a teacher.

He didn’t bleed at night

with Ma,

he bled during the day

under his work wife,

the Stray sun.

When he was home

there was bread and butter.

When he was home

Ma hid her bleeding well,

only betraying a loose tissue of

red pulp

from time to time.

But then he left

like things leave in movies:

Into a backdrop

painted like a sunset.

And all the tissues

in all the tissue boxes

in all the super markets

would have come pitifully

short of sopping up

her bleeding.

Ma blead into a sponge

and the quiet earth

hid the evidence

of her.