Two Poems
Sean Patrick Hill

Domestic

Two dead leaves on the bedroom floor,

a dressmaker's dummy, headless.

Each time I ask the grater, it says All-in-One.

In our dog run of a yard,
we eat chicken provençal from porcelain bowls.

I carry the bones wrapped in paper,

my wife in the kitchen, sharpening knives.



The Diving Bell

It is written in the circular
we receive
from the Chapel of the Roses,

this brief apology
for reaching us
in the world's ill-timed waste.

If death is fragile gravity,
an egg of air
in a diving bell,

our gravel hearts
would marry the world
to grief.

Till then I keep the shades drawn,
believing
God can't see in the dark.

1996 © 2008