Prairie Recalcitrance (meditation on the platitude, “We can always rebuild another home, we can’t rebuild another…”)

 Prairie Recalcitrance (meditation on the platitude, “We can always rebuild another home, we can’t rebuild another…”)

You

 can’t genetically replicate the second person pronoun

that is your persona, your grace.

Can’t reconstruct the lumber of your anatomy

Midwest marrow, hinge barrel shoulder

Can’t replant the Ceramic tiling of your fingerprints

Sheet paneling forehead

 Standard carpeting of your tongue.

 

 

 

 

  We can always rebuild another domicile, we can’t rebuild

The Interior plaster of your forearms

 The cradle of your ribcage

 Joist of your anatomy

spindle of your inner thighs.

 

We can splatter chemical aggregates

Into a concrete moat, we can’t

Shingle blinks into your eyelashes

Drywall the berm of your kneecaps

Splice casings into the winch of your smile.

 

We can frame more photographs, erect

A garage to house cardboard boxes

Fraught with Christmas lights and fishing poles.

 

We can build a closet with question mark hangers.

Furbish a living room with upholstery, linen scrim.

 

We can always rebuild another Thirty year mortgage

 Shoeboxes drained with coupons and property taxes.

 

We can’t rebuild the chalk masonry of your mandible

Secret ridges of your scapula

The Mortise and tenon of your hips, can’t

 

Re-Plaster the fist of your kidneys

Wainscot the tongue and groove of your cheekbones

  Re-wire the Circuit breaker of your aortic pulse.

 

We can rebuild subdivisions

out of topiary and Tupperware.

 

We can’t thread the conductors of your chromosomes

 Fit the P-trap occluded behind the button of your naval

Insulate the thermal attic of your dreams.

 

We can always rebuild another house, we

 

Can’t rebuild the helplessness you felt

That moment when the gnawing overhead

 Skirl, used coffee filter funnel cloud

Splintered molecules of dirt

Into a gushing swallow, garage door elbows

 

Leaving you everything

The cupboard of your eyes.