We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
...
"Sit in my hand."
I'm ten.
I can't see him,
but I hear him breathing
...
I'm going out and get something.
I don't know what.
I don't care.
Whatever's out there, I'm going to get it.
...
Sunflowers beside the railroad tracks,
sunflowers giving back the beauty God gave you
to one lonely traveler
who spies you from a train window
...
Lightning hits the roof,
shoves the knife, darkness,
deep in the walls.
They bleed light all over us
...
My sister rubs the doll's face in mud,
then climbs through the truck window.
She ignores me as I walk around it,
...
Overhead, the match burns out,
but the chunk of ice in the back seat
keeps melting from imagined heat,
...
I didn't write Etsuko,
I sliced her open.
She was carmine inside
...
"Earth is the birth of the blues," sang Yellow Bertha,
as she chopped cotton beside Mama Rose.
It was as hot as any other summer day,
...