Terror gurgles up to the bell
at the back of my throat.
What is that bell called. I Google
bell at back of throat. The first site responds, uvula,
cluster of grapes, Latin, fleshy
extension above the soft palate.
My mother flew here from Napoli
on a Delta flight in 1979, no green lady shining her torch
above the Atlantic, no nostalgias of immigration.
She crunched peanuts and shrugged
as the metallic bird parted smog on its way down.
Google says the uvula serves no purpose.
The sight of it reminds me of the flayed head
of Warren Mears in the Buffy episode
where Warren murders Willow’s girlfriend.
In a show of monsters, the fandom agrees
this human boy was the most terrifying of all.
He killed not to conjure an amulet that induces apocalypse
or expand his sorcery to omnipotence.
He killed because women wouldn’t fuck him.
Willow hunts him down, ties him to a tree. As he sputters
excuses, begs for life, she sighs Bored now
and flays off his skin with the flit of her wrist.
This bell chimes pinkly in our human throats
for no reason beyond body’s music. Bored now
with that explanation. I don’t want an empire of tomatoes
brightening my garden in this poem. I don’t want
stars’ caesuras slashing the dark open, constellated
metaphor for grief. Bored now
with poets playing language like rococo queens
among wigs that bob as exiled clouds.
Adrienne Rich said Beauty lies.
Stars lie. Milk lies. A bell lies. Tomatoes lie.
Empires lie. God lies. Each time the Church decided to construct
a cathedral, the peasants rioted. They knew
they’d be forced to labor till death to erect a gorgeous monster.
If you think love is gentle, you’ve never loved.
I would bite, hiss, shriek, greedy
for more and more of my mother.
The month she landed the star
role in a play touring Italy she discovered
she carried my brother in her body. She says
she wouldn’t have it any other way, says
she’d die for her kids she loves us that much
but I know we killed the star inside her.