National Poetry Month, a poem for Monday, 5 April 2010

This one is on the Academy of American Poets site, for day 5 of National Poetry Month:

Inheritance
by Daniel Johnson

We drank hard water.
Spoke in plain language.

Said what we didn't

with a joke or a look.
One went missing—

let silence drill its hole.
A second fell ill.

We cloaked our mirrors.
Slashed a red X

on the door to our house.
Pass over us, I asked

the raven sky,
or burn in me

a second mouth.