Red Tongue

The night you tore up rose bushes
from the front yard of my rental cottage,
an ambulance came and took you to Highland Hospital’s
psych ward where I watched a cigarette burn between
your fingers wondering how long it would take 
for the ash to drop into a grey heap.
You chain-smoked, cigarette poised between your fingers
like Li Po contemplating the moon’s reflection.
At other times, you recited the Ballad of Sam McGee,
played Hit the Road Jack, taught students to say hello
in ten different languages, but it was how you spoke to me
in plain English after making your entrance through the front door
and turning everything I did into an accusation as if we were both
situated in a court of law and not a marriage. 
You were an actor who wore a San Francisco Fireman’s navy wool jacket,
outfitted as a hero, costumed in curls of reddish-brown hair, a leather case 
filled with rolled up joints pressed against each other
like five tenants who shared one bed and couldn’t move.
We ate smoked oysters from a tin
with a glass of cold Chablis.
You cooked artichokes in boiling water
and blanketed our Thanksgiving turkey with a skin of garlic,
pushed your hand inside the cavity up to your elbow.
I forgave you for so much. I don’t know why I did. We visited
your mother who cared for her poodles like a lion tamer,
a plaster jaguar sitting on a rug
growled at anyone who dared enter her living room.
It had a wide, open mouth, teeth and red tongue.
I was afraid of her.