Free You Must Remember This by Michael Bazzett Page A

jostles
    it enough that the cave appears in a blood-warm glow.
    You probably know the rest—plunging the blackened
    tip through the eyelid, the crackling hiss as the eyeball
    burst, the geyser that shot from the socket—then huge
    hideous blind rage: it was easy to get inside, he thought,
    the real trick comes in the getting out: words that might
    land differently if you are not clinging to the fetid locks
    under a ram, knees pinning its rib cage, your hips held
    high as it drags you slowly into the chill morning air.
    Maybe then you’d feel the warmth of Polyphemus’s
    wounded breath, washing across three thousand years
    as he crouches above you, stroking the woolly backbone,
    inquiring why this particular one lags so far behind?

The Field Beyond the Wall
    We walk to the edge of town: there
    just beyond the wall we see clouds
    of crows and ravens, also buzzards
    teetering down to pick apart the flesh
    that peeks from every flapping shirttail.
    See that belly pale as risen dough?
    The dark oaks creak with the dead
    weight that hangs from their limbs—
    ropes taut with bodies barely turning.
    We gather on the wall, idly and in pairs,
    looking out across the charred fields
    and the smoking timbers of a farmhouse.
    By noon, the hum of flies will lull our ears
    into dreaming orchards thick with bees,
    but now in the chill of morning it is mostly
    the scrape and croak of birds just starting in.
    Someone has knotted an enemy banner
    to the tail of an ass to drag the muddy lanes.
    But the ass stands rooted in a ditch,
    shredding weeds with a ripping sound.
    Up on the wall, a woman works the crowd,
    making the rounds with a steaming sack of corn.
    People buy a roasted ear for warmth,
    holding it snug inside their hands for a long while
    before peeling back the damp husk.

Memory
    It was not yet light.
    I heard my father stir.
    I crept downstairs
    in my pajamas to listen
    as he sent my brother
    to find his spirit animal:
    If it is a crow it is a crow ,
    and you will not go hungry .
    I want it to be a bear
    or a wolf , my brother said.
    If it is a crow it is a crow ,
    murmured my father.
    The door whuffed shut
    and cold ascended the stair.
    After a long moment
    I walked into the kitchen
    where my father sat.
    I want to seek mine , I said.
    Your what? he asked.
    My spirit animal , I said.
    He laughed and pointed
    to the broom closet.
    Check in there , he said.
    Maybe the mop bucket
    will be able to teach you
    how to hold your water .
    Very funny , I whispered.
    My father shrugged,
    What do you expect?
    You’re a closet Slovakian ,
    and your brother is simple .
    Last week at the library
    he checked out the phonebook .
    As my father spoke,
    I heard the staccato
    footfalls of my brother
    and his curious gait.
    The door burst open
    with a gust of cold:
    A bus! he said. Huge
    as the sperm whale!
    The mirror of my soul
    is a crosstown bus!
    My father smiled,
    Good for you, Jeffrey!
    His face was frank
    as an open sail. Then
    he looked at me and
    mouthed these words:
    The steam that blows the whistle
    never turns the wheel .
    Now that I am a man,
    I can clearly recall
    how snow sifted sideways
    through the air, how
    I never had a brother,
    how my father yearned
    to be elsewhere, how
    I longed to board that
    crosstown bus and sit
    quiet in the weak light,
    using a stubby pencil
    to draw the curious
    members of my new
    family, smiling there
    on those paper napkins.

Soirée
    Your humor is deft and cutting
    my fingers off one by one,
    she said as we left the party.
    I started up the car and said:
    Every joke holds one blade inside
    the breast pocket of its coat
    to open things and liberate
    the world of unremembered light.
    This exchange took place without words.
    A snowbank leapt into the headlights.
    The car seemed to know the way home.
    Until that moment I had been waiting
    to put my mouth over her mouth
    and breathe the ferment of the evening.
    This might have led to touching
    the soft parts of our bodies