Dinner Table

We fill the void behind our teeth
with silence, the grinding

of wedding rings
against knife handles

a language of compatible hollowness.

*

The neighborhood mutts carcass
another roasted chicken,

our wordless bonepile
jangling in their mouths,

as if nothing can choke them blue.

*

I haven’t forgotten when I knelt—
there was so much husk

at the back of your throat,
you wept instead of saying

I do.

*

Like the word erosion on an endless loop,
the sound of your breath

is a kind of satiation,
a crater you dig

to hold me when you won’t.

*

Remember my lament
when your backhand

pattered blood across the window?
What birds could you hear

singing in the eaves?

*

The gap in my teeth
was my vow—to hold

each morpheme in my mouth
and bleed it, limp-tongued

like a partridge in a hound dog’s fangs.

*

The plate is a votive
for the moon’s guttering;

this is how our table speaks:
from void, a whisper at the bottom

of a hole, I mean a home.