Kristen de Kline #118 Matrimonial Harmony

Matrimonial     harmony
married to the second colour TV
Matrimonial     mistake
tied to a house and a wedding cake ...

what does a house    hold
    un fold     empty out rooms cupboards wardrobes into

candy-striped bags cardboard boxes marked FRAGILE
as if we weren't      walking on un folding eggshells     somebody

else's life   wife         knife

how does a house     un fold
it's not always the first cut that's the deepest

pack   and   dash, they say, count your losses

Empty out:
your son's Croatian basketball singlet crumpled in the linen closet
you smell cat piss   a Memphis Grizzlies flag winds tightly around
a wooden pole   high school year book     DIY volcano kit

he's grown out of it   all

Dis mantling:
framed prints no longer dangling     tentatively off walls

son, daughter running on sand at Bateman's Bay
Pierre and Gilles on a Mardi Gras poster '95
two turtles kissing on a Samoan tapa cloth
an accidental text artist print
bursts of brightness, overtones of Yayoi Kusama
colour     bursts, bleeds    
out

I've nabbed them now   in the rain   wrenched
heavy frames through the cars' back doors   thought I heard

glass break    felt a frame slip out of my hand    thought I saw
Ned Kelly pointing a gun in my direction     always masked and

kind of fitting that it's sweating    rain and blood    during my last
pack     and     run

my son, he won't come back     too many bad
memories he says I don't want to see     him
   the house
      any of it

at night you see he's taken a Santa snow globe from one
of the boxes, placed it on his bedside table by a cigarette lighter  

you find your German Stein in his school backpack   remember
purloining it from a Munich beer hall after your day trip to Dachau

he wrote neatly in his trip diary: it was a sad, sad place
you sampled German pilsners talked about Nazism   passed out

another hour    more rain, sweating   hoisting another carton
into the boot, jamming another striped bag through a car door

the framed pictures - another slips -   glass     crackles,
shatters like the spindly webs on the face of your mobile

more

rain

comin' down