Little Feat on the radio and a silent run ‘cross
roads Californian some week or other in late night of November
sees cactus blossoms popping up like Whack-a-Moles in the windows, I was cheated.
Short-changed, we pass another exit, roads lit solely by pinhole lights floating in filters
of low-down whiskey clouding my mind over moonless roadside, no—
she can’t actually think for a second I’m the only one
who destroyed everything, she was sick too—missing an arm, an avid basketball player—used to do left arm pull-ups on a jungle gym and punch me
to condition herself,
but I paid no mind. There was beauty, then she left—
a divorce when I returned
from asylum in
August ’99.
My father stops the truck for gas and says forgive her.
Stepping around a gas depot for a quick “breathing treatment”
I return to talk to Dad
about how my remains would best be kept when I die.
An eighteen wheeler ran down on us with a massive neon cross lit
up on its grill, like a cat chasing bird broken winged—and it seems appropriate,
but my father doesn’t care if they shit on him, so
he buys turquoise bolo ties and caffeine waters for the road. Mother is not one
for corpses, would never stand by a casket—whether cherry, walnut, or oak
lined with flowers, I decide to give her grace and burn
in flames to float in ash—away a splashing hound in baskets
on creeks and rivers through Kentucky.
Sometimes, the little spotted lamb I married is a dog,
drops solids in the grass with that guilty look beagles get,
and she walks away victoriously. She lights candles to St. Anthony
for my discovery: huge surprises—yes! step in the mess, yes—!
she left me with nothing when I was four months sober,
had tried to make me her ward, declare me incompetent,
made me wash from head to toe before I touched her,
took a father from his children when he was on the mend.
At the bar guys tell me these things happen, life is
nothing lovely, nothing calm—my thoughts come to razor—
but all is calm in this desert. I boil, I do. Looking out
from the window, a star goes
supernova blinding the moon, my children appear, as it were,
as world encrusting diamonds in assured, bright settings.
The wife steps in. Those are cubit zirconia. Her jewelry was cheap,
an expensive woman.
