Aunt Demeter

Nothing is wrong.  
You are taking up Judaism
for the food and the guilt,

filming the street behind
parlor-laced lids.
Fingers ache their fish
thrown back, half-set,
into the matriarchal bomb-shelter,

gardeners and spoke-bearded
butlers sweep the tomb
of her, yours, preternatural slumber.

Lilies loom red, to grow black and cold as you.
Unchildren’s veins

common to forests.
A parting
unfolds and tears out,
snug as a cut-out,
pop-up book,
a piper dropping into rivers
children like stitches.