Excavation

One afternoon a wet half-moon

             on the terrain below my lip:

mouth-blades splitting flesh

             to immortalize desire, sheets soiled

after the digging. I never knew

             ink could spill straight from the mouth

or dye toothpaste the color of  longing,

              and yet his typewriter carriage of a jaw

justifies anything but words. Here is the couch

             where my mother consoled my sister and me—

Madonna-of-the-Rocks style—after the yelling.

             The same bedrock she cocoons in to escape

the snore. I shouldn’t mistake warm spoon

             for parenthesis (a half-moon whose other half

is never far). One evening my lamp is a bright half-moon

             striking memory like a match,

begging proficiency in a language I mine

             from his collarbone. There is a pen that betweens

now and him. The pen says the ink is always

             flowing; the shovel says the ink is not for us.