Take away the knife
dishes at Passover washed
from the table, like the rocks
we placed on my father’s grave
when we lowered my mother in the ground.
Don’t expect a speech, throat
curled in on inappropriate flowers, throated
tight in someone’s hand, knife-
cut down the hill, not here, the ground
sacred according to the Rabbi, washed
like her body the day she died, grave
waiting without her wedding ring, no rock
but a ten dollar gold band from Brooklyn. Gone the rocking
chair at her father’s third floor walkup and throat
of lace her mother left behind, engraved
before my mother held a knife,
before she moved to London, washed
her hair in a sink when the Underground
stopped working. Maternal lineage grounded
her, the shore of Bremerhaven where a rock
broke open and her parents boarded a ship, washed
away from their deaths. But her own throated
words—what did they carry at the end? A knife
dropped at a dining table, grave
waiting? She knew, saying gravely
she couldn’t go on, leaning in a wheelchair, grounded
all day like a miscreant, no knife,
only fork and spoon, left hand rocking
back and forth, trying to clear her throat
to avoid choking, pureed food washed
in a blender. Before it came to this, she washed
her own hair for the last time, gravely,
the morning the clot throated
her brain. Stoppage of opera, grounded
from reading, where Elizabeth Bennet throws a rock
at her competitor. All the mail, I now open with a knife
though my throat sinks to the ground,
mud-washed in a dirty grave.
I throw rocks, brain open with a knife.
