Life In A Sterile Environment: A Case Study by Thylias Moss

Life in a Sterile Environment: A Case Study

 

1.

Manna must be pried

from the road. A tow headed boy

helps me. We’re a couple:

mother/son, father/daughter,

lovers. The mind is made

to accept so much, truth

we couldn’t possibly verify

except to point out

new hairs around my nipples.

Al growth will have to come

from within. These rocks

are not unlike the puffball cakes

I sprinkle sugar over

on holidays.

2.

We pile manna on my skirt.

I’m only ashamed of not being much

to look at.  Once

I dreamt of stripping

in front of Hajek’s Bakery,

lying prone on hot cobblestone

until officers covered me

with a sheet.

The boy thinks only of manna,

should we eat it raw

or cooked?  Should we save some

or is it true the supply’s inexhaustible?

I give him a piece, he won’t swallow it,

won’t be greedy in this time of plenty,

he can’t remember ever having more

not in the last hundred years.

He’d forgotten how long he’s lived,

How much he’s eaten can’t die

or starve. He throws the manna,

hands me my skirt.

There’s something eternal at work,

not the long-sought peace but.         absence.

3.

We sketch birds in the dirt,

stare at them till they fly away

then we thank any idea of God

that remains in the rubble

of St. Andrew’s

holding hands so tightly

we break the nails;

yes, we were good parents,

he tells me, staring at the empty sky,

we let go.

He leads me to the fishmonger’s stall:

Interpreter, tour guide, seeing eye,

Composer of epitaphs,

Here, seek-brick-hued carp

shined like new money

That’s when you buy,

after the ice under them melts,

after they stink. A good price then.

He spins a wheel of the overturned cart,

starts the monger’s steely voice.

“Love for sale.” Buy it, I plead.

“Going once.” Buy it. “Going twice.”

“Gone.”

4.

Final observations

The couple who has everything

leaves the stall, hugging the stinking

parcel, passing it between them.

From a distance they’re like

hosiery seams on a bowlegged woman.

After sunset they pale

into the thinnest glass,

weigh less than reflections.

Small crucifixes on filigree chains

fall through them.

Thylias Moss, a self-employed multi-racial “maker”  Thylias Moss Writing LLC, is also Professor Emerita in the Departments of English and Art & Design at the University of Michigan.Author of 13 published books, and recipient of numerous awards and honors, among them a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and many other awards, including several Pushcart Prizes, and multiple appearances in the “Best American Poetry” series  and is even  included in in the “Best of the Best American Poetry” series, all of this part of her approach to making stuff known as Limited Fork Theory an approach to making and thinking developed in order to assist co-makers and co-learners to become more collaborative in thinking and being. All about how things interact across all boundaries, and encouragement of interaction that becomes more meaningful over time; all have collaborators. Nothing makes alone, and everything makes; there is nothing that exists that does not make stuff in some form, which is also open: any form that becomes possible; invent whenever necessary. “Making” is not static, is evidence of life.She has completed with her primary collaborator, himself a poet, spoken word artist Mr. Bob Holman, with whom  she is in a meld, as he said to her, “The Fire will meld us together”, and this poem “Crepe Paper, Golden Coach Tether system” contains  that  precious  word “meld” that defines their Love connection,  and is actually a poem from an as yet unfinished collection of poems about his hat,  a Golden Coach, as it says on the silken lining.   She often wears his  hat.   She is working on a number of collaborations after her next collection of poetry Shawsheen Memorial Broom Society. Connect with her on these websites: http://www.4orkology.com http://www.midhudsontaffy.com http://www.moxiesupper.com http://www.lex97.com http://www.thyliasmoss-writer.com