Skies & Wires
these too are your children this too is your child
– Lucille Clifton
On my son’s ninth birthday we pull fistfuls of hot meat from the bone.
On my son’s ninth birthday cornmeal fries in rounds, peppers & onions marry in the pan, & in the
dusty run chickens side-eye the juiced rinds of limes.
On my son’s ninth birthday the wind stills & the flies bow down & the blossoms we have coaxed into
blossom lose on cue their flowery minds.
On the summer noon of my son’s ninth birthday the many thin limbs of children who’ve done nothing
to deserve this or anything less stretch & shiver to meet the sprinkler’s bright, sideways wave.
Oh, I quiet the round mouth of the radio, disremember for a moment the pictures whistling even now
through skies & wires — on the ninth anniversary of my one son’s casually miraculous birth I laugh
with my mouth full & stumble in the wet grass with love, here, where I am, we are, & others are not.
* * * * *
Last Chapters, or
If There Are No Eagles, Owls, or Killdeer in Your Story/World, Then There Is No Hope
When reading aloud to my children
the last chapters, those last heart-stilling,
covers-over-the-head chapters —
where all that can go wrong
has, the brave and ragtag troop
routed, the hero’s back hard
against the wall, the heroine placing herself
in the path of the vain one’s blade —
I close the book and announce bedtime,
in protest my son and daughter sit straight up —
No! More! Please read a little more! —
and I wonder if they yet
blindly trust what comes next,
or if beyond themselves they already understand
they will in this shifting
world be tasked a thousand times
to bear witness. Well,
I give in. Open the book,
turn the page —
and the sky in all of us riots with wings.
* * * * *
The Last Boy
Ass-ended by a semi
the pickup crumpled and spun,
the three of them thrown
through the windshield.
Two, they found in the bar ditch.
Broken bones, a ripped lip —
nothing plaster and thread
couldn’t put to rights.
At first, in the starry dark,
they couldn’t find the driver,
the last boy. We didn’t like him.
He was one of those
always giving us titty-twisters,
charley-horses — freckles
constellating the blade of his face.
When we heard he’d nearly
been decapitated, well,
we felt bad. We were out
in the sagebrush drunk by then,
the empty eye of the sun
rising. We held hands,
tried to keep each other
upright. It was almost
impossible, shadows lengthening
so suddenly beneath us.