Mary Jo Bang
Worse
Worse
You are in the zebra crossing,
Moving into the tornado green morning,
The shabby irradiation
Of sunlight seen through the hint
Of rain about to be. Death is
A jerky reversal of forward momentum.
Back into memory, Into a cereal bowl
On the table decades ago, the colour of an orange
Aspirin for a fever at age four
That produced a heat-filled forehead hallucination.
Think of a hive made of glass, all the bees,
Theoretically at least, describable but not all at once.
That's my mind and you
Are doing all the things you ever did all at once.
There are so many
Of you. Many more than several. Thirty-seven
Years of behaviour. Nothing terrible
Has happened as yet except the uneven drone
Inside is an announcement that there will be something
Like a sting only much much worse.
