Wounds on Parade

Pushing back her violent hair’s
nimbus of corpses, each clinging
to its thread of Pity me, please

is Gretchen, triggered fingerling
with an armed, intact Nazi tank
buried in her back yard idling loud

under the daisies. Its Caterpillar
treads’ razor teeth grumble. Gretchen
walks barefoot over the broken glass

rainbow, past the cage of tiny bluebirds
she’ll roast again for the flamethrower
demonstration in today’s parade. Don’t

ignore her sores, marching now in files
on her chest— medals and badges
cast from the frank, unmuzzled misery

that is Gretchenhood. This one? She points
a pale finger to the tarnished silver cross
and dagger, a medal pinned high above her

left breast. Her eyes lower in reverence
to it’s raised flag, a crow’s-wing-ribboned
banner— her pride, her name-tag keepsake.

Gretchen eyes us, smiles, loads and locks
the story’s knuckled fist, aims its barrel
at our softest parts. Mother qualified me

for this one. See, she doesn’t even know
which of the five guys who had her
at the party that night is my dad—

She clears her throat and smiles to adjust
the pattern of bite-marks for us— I know you
want my new book. Here, I’ll sign one for you!

Your Mother’s Body with Killer Bees

Silence is not an absence, but a held breath. The loud
buzz in everything oceans a smooth infinity, obsidian pupils
dropped an octave. Internet knife, stone cadaver. A center

with no arms, she flies duets with killer bees. Viral hyacinth
like the purr inside the tiniest particles. She is not part of
your beautiful hell, but she may become mine. Your mother’s

body, entrenched graveside, leans treeward, political pillow
of indigo sleep. Breath is the language her body self hums
in midair thru lemony fur, smooth stinger. In the classroom

beneath this one, she headmasters, tender dominatrix
soothing a chalkboard of clitorises. When her canal offers
the priesthood, we sharpen tongue-tips, shake rattles,

writhe in Pagan. I install what becomes a scrotum
full of wooden dolls, caved-in caskets, carved oak. The orbital
test of a lifespan? Knowing it’s fiction, & a desire to return.

Hypodermic friends go missing when they remove their blind-
folds and stop shrinking. Flower boxes in sunlight disarm
your mother to the other side of speech. Post-partum decor

renovations aside, her womb impersonates an organ
of habitation, its ancient and thoracic nexus a cul-de-sac
of coming home. Your mother brainstems the convex

toxins shaping my ego– earthen hearth, matching brace
of insane, laughter in concrete. She christens funeral ships
thru her children. Her albatross an amulet. An axe.

 
Vampire Current

As real as tectonic plates, you say,
the sheets of rock shifting
under our feet. Ionized
in your meaty glow, I unplug you,
mourn my future loss, hum

our mantra, Earth knows: electrons
flow. We thrive to forget—
black out, but not yet. Amperage
drawn from your open palms,
a catastrophe of stars
flickers open. Outside, the moon

floats, ice-bobble sunk reckless
in motherboard sky. I throw
circuits, insulate, recall the time

I grabbed the frayed ends
of copper wire from a bathroom
fixture you hadn’t unplugged. Clench
of muscle, body hitting cold toilet.
This continues to happen, will

never happen. Power chord incisors
pierce the wall, bleed the charged field
of our joint checking account. I raise
a robotic fist armed to scissor the line

and FLASH, a mouth full of stinging
scorpions. A blue howl halos my head.
I twitch in tongues. Electromagnetic
sugars that once spiraled across
transistorized synapse
has broken contact, lied to us—

There is no storage battery
for our dreams. We’ve saved against
an energy bill that has outstripped
its breaker. Jolt of recognition. Galvanized
terminals. Future-perfect kiss.

 
Triceratops in the Basement

The crashes interrupt
my thoughts. The sound
of cabinets splintering

gets louder
through the floor,
and the wooden stairs

collapse. The Triceratops
in the basement
snorts and charges
like a rhinoceros

only bigger, and I worry
about the walls,

realize the ping pong table
is history. At first
it was an inconvenience,

but now I know the house
is coming down,

and all I can do is sit
here in the living room
pretending to care

for the sake
of my little brother.

 
The Disfiguring Fact of Toys

Nail Biter is my pet monster. He’s green, rubbery, and
knows my real name— even though my own mother,
whose toys have all gone away, does not. She thinks
my name is Daniel, and every time she calls me that,
I see her fake plastic eyes rotate and expect. Sometimes
all the way back, as if she can see into her own brain.
Maybe that’s where her little Daniel is. But I’m out here
in my room with real people— people she’ll never see.

She’s in a made-up place of TV and long skinny cigarettes
where toys are just dead things Bobby likes to tell on me
about. That’s how this all got started. We sent Aqua Man
on his first secret mission. When the plumber pulled him
back home through the toilet after the bathroom flooded,
Mommy hit me with him hard, gripping him by his flippers.

Why did you do this? she kept yelling. I couldn’t tell her.
It was a secret mission. Bobby just laughed and laughed.
I could hear them both thinking, He’s just a stupid little
seven-year-old kid. Mommy will find out just like Bobby.
Soon she’ll know. Soon I’ll have a mother who doesn’t
think I’m stupid. ‘Cause I’m not. Nail Biter knows I’m not.

So I let her keep thinking my big brother Bobby has run
away again. But he’s one of us now— Bent in the middle.
He says my new name over and over so Nail Biter and I
can hear it loud and laugh all day. He’s under the house
listening instead of telling. I found Aqua Man in the trash,
stood him on the counter. He turns his head and blinks.