At Gramma’s House
Temperature drops forty degrees
in the basement. Legend has it, there was a game
of conjuring done back in the Sixties
where a Ouija board confirmed a curse,
and a dead pirate spat green bile into the eyes
of teenagers, and even threw a sweater at one
in the room, scaring him shitless. Since then
no sun enters the two bedrooms downstairs.
Years later, a gun was supposedly found on top
of a refrigerator in the two-car garage,
but no one supposedly ever used it. Mice colonies
occupy the corners and broken meth pipes are found
sometimes. Peek outside the door to the backyard,
there’s a quad of dead shrubs, cat skeletons,
and nopal cacti a father trims for nopales.
Dead children become sediment, a red moon
hovers over a river. From a telephone pole,
a barn owl watches the house.
Upstairs, a mother makes the sign of the cross
at the fireplace. With a trail of salt, beads
of sweat become a rosary tucked in her mouth.
Growls come from the stairwell. In the living room,
Lady of Guadalupe hangs on the wall to the left
like prayers hung for enjoyment, a crucifix is nearby,
and blood seeps through the cracks of family portraits.
Long black hair and almond eyes hood family
secrets. A cocktail of bleach and vinegar keeps
the kitchen floor clean and the tongue sour.
A plastic Christmas tree is left in the box. Here,
you laugh at bruises, fall down the stairs,
eat a Snickers bar dipped in poison, and a box
of chocolate is left within reach for the dog.
Whoever gets sick first is most loved.
The barn owl comes again, she wants her boy,
the one who was beaten with a broom.
He becomes a man using extension cords
and leather belts to say as father,
I see you. May my kisses be your welts.
The owl waits but dies before him.
I’m there, too, frozen, with small legs
stretched across his bed. The same bed
he comes to die in, with his bible
on the nightstand.
* * * * *
On East 38th Street
Minneapolis, 2020
We got him
right where we want him,
where we run through traffic lights,
bulletproof, and when bored,
speed up behind junkies
and tease children, we got him
right where the man steps out
and faces away from the parked car,
where we yell to see his hands
with our hands placed on our Glocks
and my cock hardens as I shout
the commands Step out and face away,
we got him right where the width
of his wrist is not enough to curb
my desire to be on top,
where compliance remains an act
of resistance, a bullet is too easy,
we got him right where I assert with muscle
and bone Stop talking. Stop yelling …
where at the curb, I laugh at the man
trapped beneath me, as a mouse
trapped in a deadfall with its neck
about to be clipped, where I contract
a man’s lungs and watch fear
rattle his blood, fear I give
as my only gift in this world,
the sour taste in my mouth sweetens,
and for less than ten minutes, my body’s
appetite is sustained by the thrill of it all,
the joy where intimidation cools
the air, and I forget to lick my lips,
we got him where he cries for his mama,
where I can’t move, and another man
says there is no pulse, and still,
I can’t move,
I’m chained to the rapture.