And I told him, “No, sweetheart.
You gave us the world.”

Now the angels are outside, breaking
bottles Momma thought she’d recycle.

The wise men trip an alarm
at Walgreens, drunk on Godiva and rum.

All our lives we’ve been told come December
a baby could save us—

even the high school volleyball captain
believed it—

though her middleweight boyfriend saw two lines
and pushed her down the stairs.

Now unto us, this night, in the city of accidents,
a body becomes its own planet if you let it—

leave it to weed,
it grows what it wants.

Outside the city limits, the hungry are filled
with orange chicken from a heat lamp; the shepherds

tend their pocket holes, loose change,
and this, little soul, is the promise your GG

will sew into your sleeves:
May you never stand on Grandma’s driveway

reading license plates for danger:
Winter Wonderland, Crossroads of America,

anything south of The Leader in Flight
and you run.

Never will you sit broke down in a Buick
on Ballenger testing the integrity of the locks.

You will not dream but do—Queen Esther
with a hand-drawn map to the king’s chambers.

Even if Jesus could not evade what humans do,
you will make a go of it,

the story of the desert
written in your muscles,

says a city’s walls are not stronger
than its trumpets, little one—

the promised land is real.

White Boy walks the mall like he built it:
framed the walls, troweled the stucco;

considers the KitchenAid mini cream whipper thoughtfully
the pads of his fingers pocked with roofing-fiber,

the sunburn on his ears molting
like the kingsnake he keeps by the bed.

White Boy drives us to Red Robin,
uses one hand to shift the Jeep gears,

the other to tap the top of the pack of Pall Malls,
spots a 1955 Bel Air across a left turn lane and follows it,

his heart a lit cannon, the lighter on the dash
worrying the windshield as he drives.

O White boy, O tangle of tetanus and cork tip paper,
Scrap pile, solder burn, pencil drawing of a boy

where a man could one day be.
You’ve been out looking for your heart with a metal detector,

Picking pennies from the potsoil,
Finding nothing you can use.

O strip steak, O meat hook,
O Propane tank too close to a coal fire,

show me again the photo you keep on the bedside table
from your high school graduation—

your buddy behind you about to pants the principal,
the suspension you’ll serve high on nitrous from your Daddy’s shop.

There’s a story you tell of the summer you slept
in your grandfather’s Roadmaster,

the dog in a curl of floormat beside you.
Tell it again if it will keep you here—

Not out there, God knows where.
Tell it again—tell me anything—

that will let your revving heart cool.