Still Life of Rotting Fruit

November:
Damp roses, cars with no windshield wipers.
A poem that starts at the mouth of a wound.
The fruit knife is in the sink
Sticky peachy girl guts.
The mother is in the first room on the right,
Alone, deep in conversation.
The curtains are dirty.
The smoke hangs in the air like a bad omen.

December hangs my love on a clothesline and beats it with a broom
December is a sick woman gone half mad
And her hands so restless, so restless
Such a stranger to me.

January has nothing to say to anybody.

Febuary calls for breakfast colors,
Indiana rain and a halo of frizz 
But I'm leaving my love for the birds now.
I'm burying this house under the lakewater.

March comes on like a fever.
March searches the sky for UFO's
Doesn't come in for dinner.
March says,"I know you're angry. It doesn't change things."
Rage sits at my table eating a plate anyway.
It sleeps in my temple.
It rots through my brain.

April doesn't speak.
April bites her tongue and rain falls from the ceiling.
April makes a mess of my sheets
And doesn't wash her hair for five days.
April is my mother so small
My grandmother in tears at Walmart
This whole house on a hill under water.

In a dream I take all my love to the cemetary and bury her.