The light in my chest
Matches the fire prickling in your eyes
Take what you want
Sharp and soft
I undo the buttons
Rose gold sunlight from cotton candy skies
Turning it off
Just to turn you back on again
Boxes pile in the living room
I lick my fingers clean when I’m done
My heart is tender
Just like you and me
For two weeks there was
not a bark from his little mouth
told his vocal chords
may be cut as the Amish
do to their puppy mills
Two days prior to
his neutering procedure
he srood tall on the hill bark
ing his head off like his friends
in the hood, holding his head high.
She doesn’t wait,
she pauses—
all plans shift
on this axis.
The main question:
should a child
be born now?
They walk
in the forest—
there, last year,
a fire raged.
Where the scars are
the sky shows.
Axes, pitted
steel scraped clean,
rest in oiled cloth.
In the clearing
rows of seedlings
greet the morning
sun.
To Lynn,
she was a sister in the oldest sense—
not chosen, but given,
not claimed, but known.
They were two halves
of the same long story:
childhood secrets,
shared closets,
inside jokes no one else understood.
In each other, they found
a mirror, a keeper,
a voice that never had to explain itself.
She was not just loved—
she was her person.
a seed from a past harvest missed,
Look at her hand on his face:
an interruption,
as if she might rearrange
his godhood
or leave a mark on the divine.
See her curls pulled back
like water torn in haste,
Cerberus already growling
at her feet
as she writhes
into myth.
Only marble remembers
how hard it is
to be held.
I was a bald baby obsessed
with fellow babies blessed
with heads full of hair.
Mother said luxurious hair
on babies really annoyed me.
Apparently, I found it disconcerting.
I wanted to seize it,
grab it as though it were
a misplaced pelt
or a baby toupee
that could (and should) be removed.
I couldn’t be like them,
but I could make them like me,
highbrow and hairless.
Bald babies in solidarity—just imagine.
I’m a feller from a holler,
And I guess that’s all I’ve ever been,
My folks have lived up in the mountains,
Since a way back when.
If you follow the stories,
And all our family tales,
They trace back to the mountains,
Of old Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Even my English Ancestors,
Farmed the margins of the isle,
They were used to thin steep soil,
And knew how to face life’s trials.
I imagine when they immigrated,
And saw Virginia’s shores,
And heard of the far off mountains,
They knew what was in store.
They weren’t made for the tide water,
And the gentry left them cold,
They had known enough of lords and ladies,
In their island home of old.
They loaded up their muskets,
And there plunder and packs,
And what they couldn’t heap upon a horse,
They carried on their backs.
They followed after Boone,
On his trace up through the gap,
And they settled in a holler,
There to farm and hunt and trap.
Now, of course they made some changes,
In this new land they settled now,
Corn was no longer wheat and barley,
And “plough” became a “plow”.
But the water that bubbled,
From over rocks and rills,
Still made the “usquebaugh”
In the same old copper stills.
They still sang the same old ballads,
The same old stories here were told,
By the fire in a cabin,
On winter nights so long and cold.
The land was big and wild,
But of course, so were they,
They were people used to hardships,
And they were here to stay.
I reckon it seems old fashioned,
That I ain’t changed all that much,
On the land I call a farm,
I still keep a mule, a cow and such.
Independence starts in the furrow,
And I think it follows the plow,
It’s always been that way,
From way back then up til now.
And as we learned from grandpap’s grandpap,
When the world becomes too much,
Get yourself up in a holler,
And find some earth to touch.
Remember
whirling twirling until you fell down dizzy and watched the sky spin and the sun spat rainbows like a cinimatic mandala and you were Robin Hood Dog and you were the Sugar Plum Fairy and you were the Wickedest Witch in the Hood and you were Nancy Drew before you realized you didn’t need a man to save you and then you were a Dragon Roaring down the street and then… and then… you could… fly?
Remember that?
