burun wrote:I always wanted a twin brother.
Only Child
There’s so much I could tell you,
fingernail of my fingernail,
bloodshot pupil of my bloodshot eyes.
A house built itself up gradually
over dead dogs with tree-limb altars,
over hibernating yellow jackets,
over delicate tensions we
burn off like a tick at the temple. Oh,
where were you when the old man crept naked
through the house with his .38,
swearing there was a faucet on somewhere—
we’d been robbed and the sorry son of a bitch
had the gall to drink a glass of our water.
This dragged on into the winter.
The cold brought out the worst
in anybody.
A child got beaten unconscious
in December, with a snow shovel.
A child hid himself in the bushes
with a high-powered pellet rifle
he pumped as if loading a shotgun shell—
a Buddhist might call it karma, what happened,
the snow flying all around.
But what would your expression be
for the way his ankles were tightly bound
with a piece of chopped-off hose?
As he was dragged through the dirty snow,
what would you have whispered,
face I have never seen,
sister I keep on missing?
You’re the one I always wanted—
the grape vine that taught me how to fall,
the graveyard I call my garden.