11 August 2008 | Vol. 8, No. 2

The Dog of Eight Breaths

by MARK BILBREY

*

Between: as in lines, phrases, measures, sobs, errands, degrees, lovers, teeth, walls, ribs

*

Relief valve. Wailed heavy on his father's chest.

*

A sighway. Hello, epiglottis;

goodbye, heart. Blue dumpster.

Cheek cellar. Molar spit-suck.

      Don't move your lungs, just breathe with your mouth.

      Okay, now just your lungs, no mouth.

      I'm just asking.

*

Sign with your

lips full

of blood and cracked

hugging incisors

like a boxer.

*

After words retreat

To the breast

Milk and funnyache

Father, father

Pumped my mother

Face to face

And shaped my brother

*

face to the air

to the skyline: empty, full,

to the ex-haled wares,

elm, tower, leaf-left, bare,

wearing mother's labor,

a neighbor from every floor

*

What sigh are you

keeping, well?

What reserve in store,

what cloud before you

reap? From the leavings

of whose field harvest

wind to speak?

*

The more empty the more full, these silos, near my heart, left me by inheritance.

That is, someone breathed her last.

Expands in me the horizon.

The senses are mindful, of mind. But not the breath.

Old Job, in his home, fat of breast.

The mothers, his mother, fat of breast.

And fat of exhale.