1. FatherThe dog is ash and mud-brown, sleeping.It did not know the time. The airport had no clocks.Don’t ask questions.
They’ve changed the maps, added orange cones.The passengers don’t ask questions.Carve of the concrete blocks your fortune:
a pint of cheap aluminum beer, a bouquet for whoever demands.A child, a price called tuition. Trace for the crowdcowboys’ eager rope, beg their love, take their money.
God made the roads in circles, like dogschasing tails. Like clocks and fallen leaves.
I could send you crashing against the benches’ metal teethI could scream louder than your motherlouder than you, cast you out
with a question that isn’t a question.I could send you crashing through the citycounting the uncountable trash.
After your confession, I see my own father’s ghostat the foot of the bed with the dog while your mother hides in her yarns.I hate what you've done to this family.
Your skinny wrists breaking against the lawnmower,your feckless humiliation, the letters I signed for your liberal school.Your pink toys, that high-pitched feedback from the news.
2. SonDreaming, dreaming, a mother’s faded colors,a child’s defiance. Iron covers for the drainage. Silence.The rubber soles of strangers beat the graffiti into ash.
Roots crack concrete every summer.Trees are arrogant here, uglier than grass andshedding every year like a hoary cancer.
The hardware store raises its prices on their essentials: primer, saw bladesto hold against your face and call yourself man.
A young pine that will not fall. An angry browndog: stand tough, get mad. Vomit. Vomit.
You made me this way, hungry, eyes just like yours:unsmiling, thin mouth reciting Stemmons, past Love Field, 35-East, cryingbecause I saw a man who looked Iike you.