Drunk Again, He Pushes Her
       

If she falls this time, my grandmother,
into the cluster of cacti she nursed from

blunt-cut pups, if she awaits her wounds
to callous like lobes nicked to stomata,

or spines scarring their way into woolen
areoles, she'll laugh until the sultry lure

of shame is beyond her. If the golden barrel
stems stake her flesh this time, purloining

through breach and bract, if they take
hours to pluck while flowers genuflect

from the crown of globes cresting loose
from pot to linoleum, spilling dirt in which

she's learned to rest her head, she'll coax
each deep-clenched thorn refusing closure

with her nails, its pulpy, fevered now.
If the woman-pain threading through the yard,

up the stairs, to the place she's fallen does
so by instinct now, the way that untamed,

it's learned to lay its body upon her, she'll use
the word accident, blame her German

shepherd's sweet-sly heft. And if somewhere
she's still falling, half-erect, half-floating,

if the alibi she learns to mouth is quilled
into her blood like a siren song, I'll say this

is how I'm falling, this is how I fell—gravity
my heirloom, my bluntly conjured flare

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Copyright © 2019 Sara Henning All rights reserved
from View from True North
Southern Illinois University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission