I pull branches low so my son can reach the fruit.
We agree, the best ones are unfinished,
a little sour.

In the morning our mother frowned at the back of your shirt
stained purple from drunk slumber under the mulberry tree.

The night before I found you crying in the barn
on the cobweb box dusted with last year's corn.

All the girls from the party wanted to comfort you
but I sent them away.

He is my brother, still mine.
Sure you may suck him off and buy drinks
and cigarettes, flash your panties down the bleachers
but it was me who talked him down since the pre-school quest of
where does the universe end and what is on the other side and if infinity is the biggest number then
what is half of infinity and what do you mean if you keep cutting the size of your steps in half and in half
you will never ever get there and how can it be everything is just all empty space and where was
our face before you washed it this morning
and I can talk him through this one too.

Certainly existential crises may be better solved by a blow job
but tonight let me hold your head steady,
tell you it will be okay
that this is normal
and promise mom and dad will still love you
if you chase absolutes and exceptions,
roots and branches, truth and beauty
instead of the fortune five hundred seventy two.



�2006 by Jennifer VanBuren

deep into the cavern of sleep
a call for water comes
just halfway to the starlight it comes
you recognize the voice
of course you turn back
scrape your knee on the rock
by the time you get there
he is already gone

you wonder when your stories began
to have a beginning
middle end as you climb back
through slick water rock
and reconsider the whispers
stalagtite and stalagmite
because these words are no secret
they will not help you prove anything

silicon and calcium hold hands
and you call to them
because their names
sound like names
Silicon!
Calcium!
you ignore the remainder of their union
the oxides and carbonates
that turn fantasy back into science

and tonight science snores on
you can hear his rattle like a snake
that winds through your days
a greased railling
that gives the illusion of promise
but you know by now
not to bother reaching over
for slippery-scale guidance
the muscle pulses like a wave of peristalsis
but there is no meal
only memory

his teeth have dulled
you bring straws and soft foods
tonight's beasts are caged or
sleeping upon yesterday's cloth
it is safe now to rise
and go



�2006 by Jennifer VanBuren