She, of all, knows how—adopted a son
who was once someone else’s damaged goods.
His brain tumor wrote itself across
a half-slurred child face, a smallness
that placed him alone and in the perpetual front row.
When she says, Man, I wish I had a maid,
and he hears her, he calls from his full-headed bed:
Man, I wish I had a Dad!

She peers over my pink blanket and strokes
my stale hair. I do not offer my scars
for her perusal, because she knows the pain
of not being able to have, of having and losing,
and obtaining something that takes longer
to make your own than your own ever would.
In her softened waddle, I see a hardened warrior,
a steeled surrogate, a reminder that what we call misery

might actually be easy.

My grandma
used mine to
clasp her bra
behind her shingled back,
asked if I could
tie her shoes
when her knuckles
turned to knobs.
These pointed things
on our twisty wrists
are performances
of young and love
and young love.

You can make a swan
on a wall, but what
was that church, steeple,
here’s all the people
song about anyways?
I only noticed
my confused thumbs,
never ever cut my nails.
I guess daily function
wore down
the points.
Have you ever thought
of all the things you do
with your hands?

Have you ever thought
of all the things
you don’t?

Drug deals play out their beat:
the reticent shuffling song of my street.

A thinskin
sunken cheek creature

preludes her
emaciated mate.

Sometimes the container is a Lean Cuisine box.
Sometimes a too transparent bag.

One woman whistles.
The other’s feet meet her,

like a drumroll, hurtling slowly,
in their unintended percussion.

Amidst this melody of stripped soles,
I peer over a rim of wrought iron

in my canopy of leaves and judgment
studying their musculature and worn bones,

watching white powder
turn women into my morning wonders.

The children, in unknowing orchestration,
fill the silence in this early high song—

the asphalt opera
disjointing two moms—

and I number
eight, no nine

babies waiting, wordless,
to be brought inside.

I don’t really remember
the popped tire,
just the trail of the boat in rearview,
swerving like it would have in waves,
feathers from the truck bed like plumes
decorating our exodus,
some barking, some talking,
some memories of the river,
at peace, in its past afternoons.
I remember: the faint feel of spent revel,
the frayed edges of wet shreds.

when you kill a chicken by decapitation
it really does run
flies actually
ten feet up
spurting blood from its neckspout
onto your mother’s window
and the neighbors’ fenceposts,
but you have to let it go,
can’t hold it down for those last
fleeting flying fighting moments.

never tie my dog up before he dies;
he needs to face east.

and bury me at sea.
fish have no memories.

I take you between my teeth
and pods are your meat,
hidden in a furry salt hammock.

I feel bad biting you,
sliding out all of your secret worth
from a seam in your side.

But you satisfy,
and rest in a mound of sure shells,
like piled smiles, certain of your tabletop purpose.

I think that if you could remove beads
from me
you’d have to go through my feet.

We must all be walking sheaths
and some
stay salted, soggy,

unshed.
I would rather be secret
than put back in the wrong bowl and tried again.