Killing the Snake Plant
This used to be the tallest living thing
in the house without legs. What happened?
You can’t remember if it was over-water
This used to be the tallest living thing
in the house without legs. What happened?
You can’t remember if it was over-water
and I ain’t afraid to use it. My therapist
says trauma is stored in the hips
and I replied that’s why I have this overflowing dump
truck. I’ll hit a stray
parking-lot-abandoned grocery cart with my hip
into the metal corral cuz ya’ll don’t have the juicy gluts
to walk ten feet.
He woke up thinking what he said she said
or was it she said he said
or each didn’t say
the other said
and he said I didn’t say that and she said you did
This poem is a dog
that shits all over your house.
This poem is the shit
you find ground in your carpet.
This poem is you
abandoning the dog
on the side of the road
where you found him.
You were my biggest mistake. In the yard,
our second son gave way to a shard
of glass and still, you did nothing. Kept mum.
Knife to air and he was taxing the sum
He’d work in the summer with steam
rising from new roads, climbing up
and down from loaders and scrapers,
fixing whatever needed fixing then
he’d come home …