Silence
Cocaine-tipped
tragedy
carved with gold-
plated
powder,
sniffing dandruff
like the sun
cracks
for
her.
Addicted to the lies.
Eaten by mice
and Trojan skies.
Bereft of belief.
Delightful
yellowing
teeth.
Fire-torn creature.
The child with bruised eyes.
His
cadmium
concubine.
Soon to be
slaughtered
by substance.
By silence.
Severed
tongue
but
her mouth’s
a river.
No mother.
Now watch
the demise
of his
cracked-
lipped
concubine.
Fists
Six eagles’ feet
and hands upon hands surround my lungs.
This is the birth of a punished son
who only wanted love.
The earth is an unknown bed.
Fire is
resurrection
is my mother peeling oranges again.
Fire is
hope
again.
The price of flesh
is a river of blood.
The price of fire is every boy pointing at my liver and running home to his
father,
crying.
I want you to know what it means to be the mouse in the house of eagles.
I want you to know what it means to perceive father and receive claws.
So that when the earth is
hope
again
it can heal my gutteral scars.
Six eagles feet
and hands upon hands surround my lungs.
There’s nowhere to run
when father is tearing your bed sheets
and mother is peeling your tongue.
There is
pain.
There was always going to be pain.
Pain of asking for love
and getting fists.
My Ribs (Like Knives)
We are born
with knives for fingers.
A cycle of violence
starting with dinner, ending with table.
Orestes,
brother,
there are no words I won’t speak to save you.
(No bodies I won’t burn to keep you alive.)
Find the forest to escape.
The path
a convoluted vein.
A path that promises grief
and drawn blades.
Run, brother.
The trees that rooted us
want to kill us.
I count the grapes.
I count my ribs.
My fig drips purple juice; the family’s curse.
(One truth I am certain of: dinner eats me.)
The past has its claws in me.
This skeleton gnawed by hope
for sunrise. For mother’s arms.
(Sorry for staying quiet for so long.)
The past has its claws in me.
His hands: Troy’s finest forks.
His corpse: a wrinkled grape.
(Sorry for not saving Him from the knives.)
Revenge is the call to dinner.
It is too late for Him now but
I’ll tie her hands with ropes.
See what her corpse makes of
my retching throat.