Piecing

I met a man in an aisle of the rocking chair store.

He ate an artichoke in small pieces.

His front teeth rattled the knife blade.

Every tropical storm has a small eye.

When the winds batter, the brass boxes on my mother's dresser quiver like a jaw.

Her mirror shattered last summer.

She bought the glass from two Russian women; they worked a booth at the street fair, fondled their long braids.

My father sliced wood from a spruce with a blue-handled ax.

He lugged it to her in a cloth sling; she trailed her hand down his bicep, stopped above the elbow.

When this rocking man had gulped it down, he fumbled in his pocket for a compact mirror.

He eyed his molars for green strings, knots of squash and corn in his dark mouth.

My mother once chirped:

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Love turns sideways, squeezes between the cracks in our stomachs.

Once between the ribs, any man at all could track down the heart.