return of the clay

This poem (the first part of it, and a worse version of the second part) had been sitting in my stack of to-be-finished poems for the past 6 months or so. Thankfully, at God's urgings (the creative genius that he is), I returned to it... and will hopefully be able to include it among some in application samples. Constructive criticism, anyone? Whether you do or don't "get" anything, your feedback means a lot to me. Thanks.


CLAYHEARTMATION

I.
Their skins: orange with red-circle
cheeks, like construction paper
cutouts pinned to their skins; one in skirt, one
in jumper—blue-jean,
but clay-jean—; dark
clay blocks, slabs of leg,
rectangular flat-shins thighed without feet
(nothing blended, just
fuzzy if moved).

Two clay girls on green-grass hill, a clover-
leaves-and-dandelion pasture. Bucket made
of plastic clay, filled with clay; a sand-hole
digging, dug with wilting shovel:
one and sharing, each of them.
Moving, shifting. Cheek-circles, hot. Singeing
under circle-sun, hanging, dripping, sweating
clay-beads; water, baking angry,
selfish. No help, no share—move apart.

Jean-jumper, hers! Stealing one
with gripping claws. Baked-up nails, the fingernails
scratching on a jumper, not hers.
Tear, a shred of clay, a peeling layer comes and falls.
Cover gone, the chest—another slab—pounds,
beating, up and down inside
the out-girl. Dandelion hair, choose
one, choose none. Choose share, choose us.

II.
Then, safe, your fleshy father hand
beneath my neck, you sinking needle
through the flesh of my chest, sealing
blue up the cavity she left—and is it gone,
where’d my beating go? That spike or yelp!—
why, so wide awake? Without drug, I’m counting
the pierced and shallow
sag of my breath. Needle thin through
clay skin around a space
of collarbone, where a ribcage should
shield up the meat that used to be my old heart;
but I can’t sound an alarm—for the people
in your house, the quiet where
we are—silent as tears dripping
into my teeth and soggy paper cheeks.
What have I now: what you see and nod
to a pain needing
being. Sewn. All right—sew on, or
will this never heal?

III.
When it was three: clay
girl one, two, and you, you held
in the middle their miry hands.

But two: on her own in the dry dust, elbows
stretched at extra weight of heart—not hers. Burnt,
dried black, she drops it to flies.
Back turned now, sun still
raging, she’s secured her drooping
limbs with glue and wire left after
a pipe cleaner drought followed through.

You wait for her come-around.
Will she come again

apart or around?

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