The story goes that the NY girl almost killed

by her mother (heroin, highballs, hammer)

later confided to a school friend that she began

to wonder if her DNA was encoded

for disaster, that the snarling voice of taxis was

radioactive and that sunlight tasted

like mud flowers try as she might, she could

not spit it all out.  A few days later,

this girl, a swirl of lavender, ran into Times

Square howling like an old crone

in a black shawl who was now alone forever.

She ran from the cops as if from angry

bees, and seeing only barbed wire and cemetery

stones, she cried out for thunder-winged

angels and holy water to wash out the filth

from her eyes; when the sun edged around

a cloud, in the heat of its own arrival it became a

bright red rosary and the girl understood at last

that to wear its light was to believe in something

else, that God had let scatter the seeds

of truth in her furrows, and that’s when the icepick

rammed home, right through above the ear,

through the side of the skull, her own mother making

a sacrifice without needing a tree, some timbers,

nails and hammer.  Arms around her daughter,

the weeping mother prayed for the Good

Lord not to teach her any more prayers, that this duty,

the tool gone heavy in her hands, was enough.