the end of virtue
she has a legacy before her.
all of her children are standing
in a row on the stage with a black curtain
pouring across their backs.
each one’s smile is the moon
round and yellow and crusty
and she’s sitting in the darkness
with a broth of persons all around her
like an audience, breathing and brewing
into some sort of emotion, some sort of finality
of ovation. whenever their son smiles,
an innocent, never-bloodied smile,
they clap hands with cupped fingers
like the mouths of mussels.
when she drives home
she looks at herself in the rearview mirror:
the lipstick allaying the wrinkles on her cheeks
and her clear, wet eyes veiling the black pockets
underneath them.
it’s not yet dark
but the front lights are golden and on.
she tells her son how nice the show was
and how nice he looked and how nice he smiled
and her son doesn’t care
because he’s used to watery, gratuitous,
motherly affectation.
when he looks over to her,
she closes her eyes in a pugnacious, martial anticipation.
he thinks she’s pushing the wheel away
from her chest, as if she doesn’t want
to drive anymore, with elbows popped
open and extended like umbrellas. there’s a screech
like the bark being ripped from an oak tree
and there’s glass on the asphalt and his
pants are wet and there’s some sort of
dog-like animal breathing on him, and he wishes
he was still smiling moons on that stage.
when he’s picked up from a scrunched-up window,
he can only see the tree’s limbs over him.
he thinks this is a dream (or that he has dreamt this before):
every leaf is like a flag
and they’re all half-raised on their branches,
apprehensive that the cold weather
would clot them together on the ground
like blood.
