Ask What I've Been
I think gauze wound
around ankle, plaster poured
into a chest-shaped mold.
I think wet cement.
I say stone, and you think pebble
in stream or marble fountain or kimberlite.
I say gravel or grave
or ask me later. There are days
I mourn being built from this. Made
of so much aggregate
and gravestone, so little
diamond and fountain water.
When I was a construction crane
my balled fists
toppled buildings of boys.
I rifled through the pockets
of their ruins.
Ask what I’ve been. Detroit
is a stretch of highway littered
with windshield,
a boy picking the remains
of a window from his hair.
I say Detroit;
you think glass.
I say glass; you think atrium;
I say atrium beams
warped by heat;
think cathedral. My shoe soles
say stain. Glass between treads,
treads imprinted on gum.
Everything finds its bottom,
say the sewers.
Don’t come any closer,
begs a map of collapsed veins,
while the burnt-out colonial,
this empty lot,
and this alley-dark cavity
all say the shelter is sparse, yes,
but there is space here for bones—
a ribcage, brimming like yours. 