Full Circle: Two Poems

A Sort Of Prayer, A Sort Of Poem

Grace is Grace because her face says so.
They let her choose her name.
It took almost forever.
(They were her parents. Still are.)
It took dolls-heads full of human speech.
Took them beyond crawlspace,
into the not-so-silent thought.
Took teddy-bear vibrato, mashed
pillows, a discarded balloon
of utterance of utter nonsense
-all those baby kisses they told
each others skin led to this,
the first fingernails of language
so she could choose oranges
over green, the shaped mouth,
the sound of a piece of the giant-
sized jigsaw puzzling out
of a world, her own
sign to seperate her eyes
from its mirror,
wherein her tongue tip.

*

Who Is Fiscus?

In his dementia he forgets.
Has sewn on a blood-sized hat
& let no man come between them.

If he had grandchildren...
Perhaps, once.

Yes,
one day someone too small
to find again
gave him a picture...

they were wearing his features;
it all looked better on them.

The picture though,
that was perfect,

pinned to a corner of
his cardigan-stained mind

he cannot face.