Poetry

Two seats away, my father watched
the tenor study the world that rumbled
parallel to his window: crumbling

The woman saves every heart- or wing-
shaped rock she finds, studding the mountain 

We are tired of arguing about who is the most hurt.
Better to toddle off for a little Chinese.
The locust flowers each year like cornmeal in the gutters.

Spark, then fire begins. Fire pulls oxygen
deep into the box. Come, child, there’s something
I’d like to show you in the back of this

Watch him flip
them the bird
after the ball

I am born. I dream the nightroom of your body,
and in that place, you sing, build me of words

Time passes
into the limbs of the boys
on the field stretching

I am not yet dead. Do not call this miracle or raise your hands in praise. First, 
you should know how long I prayed, and how I came to know the silence of the Lord.

They put their guns in the only boxes
that they had, and those the well-
liquored strips of gin barrels