Two Aunts

When I feel the old hunger coming on, I think of my two great-aunts, A farmer’s daughters, Speaking into the dusk in North Dakota. I imagine the dark baron Riding out of their mouths, Thick-skinned and girded Against disaster, swathed In cuirass and chainmail and a curse. My hunger was theirs Too long ago. It swims in my blood, Groping for a foothold. It is the dark I thrust my tongue against, The wine and the delicate symphony That makes my head tick so exquisitely Tonight. My ladies, My dusky girls, I see you With your bustles puffed up like life preservers, Your needlepoint rose garden, Your George Eliot coiffures, Your flounces gathered like an 1890s valentine. You both took heroin. Your father never noticed. You sprinkled it in your oatmeal, Embroidered doilies with it, Ate it like a last supper At midnight. I know what you meant. There was always the hunger, The death of small things Somewhere in your body, The children that would never Take place in either of you. You were a garden of lost letters. A lust inhabited your veins. My addicts, The village spoke of you. Under your parasols, two rose windows, The world swam with color. Riding the monotonous hills at daybreak, You escaped the indecisions Your blood has handed down To me. You rode your father’s spotted horses As if they might have ferried you Over an edge, a dark mouth in the distance. I see you ride the black hills of my mind, Sidesaddle, gowned in lemon silk, Galloping In your laced-up flesh, completely unaware Of something I inherited, The doubt, The fear, The needle point of speech, The hunger you passed down that I Possess.