Elizabeth Cantwell: “Housewarming”

    The garden the previous tenants left is abandoned 
save for a handful of peppers    hanging on    tenacious    thumbing
their flesh at the heat    I roll our trash cans next to them    I am replete
with June    High noon    I am convinced there is something
medically wrong with me    My voice has been hoarse for a month
My digestion off    I wake up in the early hours of the morning
with my heart beating like a hundred clocks    The sun is a heavy hot
smock curling over my shoulders    There is a pocket inside each 
of us that    pushed sharply enough    could pop    could
ask us to take the knife out of the kitchen and plunge it into the dirt
until it hits bone    When I am alone I can hear it    It wants me
to feel that sick sad yes    Severed roots hissing through the mess
in my palms    Let us now undress the world    Let us peel off 
its crust    its mantle    its outer core    Let us find the poor sore 
soul at its center    Covered over in grief and triggered and worn
to its own tiny world bone    Let us reach in and draw it out
through the blood and muscle and pulsing skin    Transplant it
somewhere inside ourselves    Holding on   Lying down 
in the middle of it all    Tall tall bodies exposed 
to space    Only then will this place feel like home