cracker flat
she could be so many things or so i like to do so like to thinking of so many of the many she could be like somewhere quite nigh unto me i think no matter what i think or know as well as i could know a single thing that i am sitting on a mattress mattress smell of piss and beer with not so great a distance stretching stench between the two as i am thinking not of what she could and do not know the fact that when she had her share of odor beer and piss her nose mashed up against her trying to sleep and maybe something in her face in darkened room with rubbish strewn across the floor where lay the mattress stenchful rubber rotting i am thinking when i think of anything that she could be but not a thing she is no thing she is no thing to me distracting me from roasted beef and one variety of cheese on a plate by the mattress and crackers sour-doughed and tasting flat as crackers flat as any foaming rubber mattress on a carpet with the rising notes of cheese in growing nasal volume pitching to a stench with maybe note or possibly a chord of rusty fishy smell of menstrual blood it may have been that stains the other side i keep against the carpet she would not have to touch were she to be beside me for a good night’s sleep breathing through our mouths percussive music snoring chorus her and me or she and i or we the semi-soft becoming softer and more semi as we sleep the roasted beef there drawing out the roaches big as thumbs you may be thinking coming out to crawl along the carpet under roaches long accustomed to and long no longer succored neither suckered by the smell of beer nor piss nor blood these roaches now they wait upon the manifested thing presenting odors meaty cheesy giving me to dreaming of her sleeping here despite my thinking though i left the beef and semi-softness of the cheese besided by the crackers flat and airing out the mattress on one sunny day leaving on the outside light one snowy night to think that she has had her fill of piss and blood and rather elsewhere seeks to spill her sleep.
Song for Father’s Day
We stripped him naked and painted him blue. Water-based acrylic, so it wouldn’t kill him. It was a warm night. He’d be fine.
Then we smeared rancid butter in his hair and we told him, You go screaming down that hillside and come to a stop among those jumbly rocks. He did that and when he got down there, we held him there until it was time to bring him within the palisade and into the dark clot of thornberry bush.
He was good, he barely made a sound outside of the screaming when he ran down the hillside. When the thornberry bushes were poking and tearing at him, he kept mostly quiet. Just a gasp here and there, and a quiet Ow! a couple times.
Even when it was time to snip him close around, all he did was stick one of his fingers crossways in his mouth, bite down hard, and give a few low, guttural, humming cries.
After that was done, we sat him down and told him what it was we did before we knew.
We told him the meanings of his names.
We carved the cry of God into the palm of his left hand.
We lit the fires and drew maps in the sand at his feet. Sketched how it was we have come to be. Gave him the colors for envy and hate.
They’re not the ones you’re thinking.
We put stones in a circle and spat on them. Built up a new fire of twigs and garbage. Filled a coffee can with hempseed and placed it over the fire. Danced with him in the smoke.
Told him it was time to sing.
Time for him to sing.
Sing, damn you! Sing!
Did he sing? Oh, he sang, my brothers. He sang.
