Mobile homes spill grass from their ears. A kid burns
his deflated blue kickball. Some fortune cookie
tongues, like ex-lovers, never come
true. In other words I once taught a cat how to fly
with my boot. I rubbed a turtle in turpentine
until my fingers knew shampoo. There’s a grin
in the way death inks the hands. At night, women
on the porch stitch stars into their veins, drown Lucifer
down through their livers. Strange men crawl
into foxholes and dream their sickness will spread.
I aim to be beautiful as the Lord made me. To hold a torch
against the sun. Wait until all that’s left of darkness is darkness.