Shapes in the Kitchen Linoleum

Shapes in the Kitchen 

Linoleum

I think maybe before the linoleum is left

to cool in the making if it, the liquid swim

is pooling lavenders…and they’ll eventually

turn to ropes and chains of thicks and thins:

blacks and greys, strains of what breaks

away: what can be felt with the fingers

of a woman kicked blind in her own mind,

how it all came to her being naked

on this floor after the simple opening

of a door to God Knows

who…the first bruise to come through is right

below the throat where, shaped strangely

like a boat I notice, when I’m told I should know

she’d been beaten the night before and won’t

you come home to her hospital bed

the eight hours it will take you may save

her to think someone at least cares and so:

below the throat, yes, where, shaped strangely

like a boat, it’s anchored longer than the rest

because the clavicle below it is broken.  And then

there is the neck, how like a purple turban

or curtain, and the split and split again lips

and through them the toothless drool.  And then

the purple worm of her left eye, blurred, 

and all up and down and inside of her

legs…it wasn’t method, the beating.  It was

rage, it was all the shit I’ll never know

about.  But looking at her I noticed

how she resembled the old floor

in the kitchen in the old house before the fire,

the swirl of the linoleum could’ve been

any boat ferried by any Charon, and any number

of hers taking her spot at the bow, abandoning

the day to a limp and unberthed person. 

Seeing her uncovered here and the deep

bleeding beneath her skin reminds me:

those worn places in front of the flour bin,

the absolute hours of chafe and wear standing 

of there, three ages of women…how they wage

war from the floor, spots worried clean

off.  Do they swirl it, the makers of linoleum? 

The linseed, the cork, the pine resin, the all else 

inks to set the pattern we walk all over without 

so much as a how’s your mother?  Do they see,

sometimes how it may look like the beach 

in my part of the world, like when the tide’s

gone out and all those small rivulets are able

to drain on their own, beneath the seaweed squeak

if they want to, retreating?  How sometimes

just before it’s all set and about to rise up

to another surface altogether it breaks a bit

of itself off, or is broken by the forces of 

an open door, and eventually beaten 

to that pulp, glides down like an open

vein beneath it all, all of it surrounded

by the ivory of coming clean, the ivory

of her skin…it’s surrounded by shapes

beginning to harden and settle and resolve

themselves in being seen, printed, beaten

to the knees, seeing, seeing.