The next time you start sputtering tiny explosions

in my water pipes, and clanging until my ventricle flutters,

or chattering behind a wall, so mysterious

I can’t know if it’s you or just plumbing on the bum,

the next time you growl under a floorboard

fiercer than a caught muskrat, starting, stopping,

like you’ve been wounded

and left for dead,

covered with cobwebs,

smelling of damp dirt and coffiny air—

next time you rush the wrath of you through my drainage,

your pockets filled with monkey-wrenches loosening traps,

and water hammers pounding my head,

you could try speaking plainly, you bossy plaguey thing.

if you can’t say straight out How are you? like a human, don’t

hide in my pipes, grinding like a goat’s digestion.

What are you insisting about anyway?

All that repeating, repeating,

tapping, echoing through my whole system.

I think of those mystics who made God’s noises

when they prayed, their constant

rumble, their incantations, climbing up.

What is it you want of me?

to wake and be—be what? glad?

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