The Mirror's Lake Is Forever

That’s when I knew the mirror was all sex and hard

fact. Unlike knowing my grandfather

posthumously. Because a ghost can’t be

androgynous as a lamp is,

as peat moss is,

as the smell of cedar—

knife-feathery. Because the dead

can watch me pee without

even a trace of embarrassment. And who

has the right to more? Mirror

that couldn’t reach my dead

grandfather’s closet—his jewel-colored

medical books in former editions,

his gay porn magazines: men smooth

as conchs in softcore seascapes. My mother,

who found them while cleaning

out his house, asks, Are you sorry

I told you? I said, No,

I’m not sorry. As if staring

into his horn-rims and my grandmother’s

coral dress could help me understand

the selfishness of portraits—

their shut door splintering the past’s

exact coffin-space.

I know that shame

is beard-high with two daughters—the blonde

one with cats and the dark one with red-

haired girls. I know

the mirror’s lake is forever

dragged for corpses, lily-buoyant

arteries, livers, and cocks. I know

he’s caught there: doctor,

with his white coat, and gold-veined

tobacco. And what is more haunted

than the smoked voices

of cicadas under plums? And what

heats faster than silver? His constellation:

cold instruments raised

over useless space. Somewhere

there’s a ghost

I’ll open my shirt for, recount my

Entire Medical History for,

who I’ll forgive for wearing

tweed and love beads and for hiding

stacks of magazines in the dark, who will press

that silver scope to his ear, who will listen.