I.
My younger brother used to jump crimson from second story windows. Pond out back. I dropped an iron on his nose–now he’s a compulsive liar. My older brother is a ghost. Whispers: move out of the house with the pond. If the supernatural is defined as that which we don’t yet have language for–plant a tree, don’t talk about what makes it grow. Plant another. Line the driveway with them, in fact. Mark where it hurts to look. Crawl on hands and knees to reach underneath.
II.
There’s a man inside my body. He grew from the seeds on my skin, dirt under my fingernails. Took me to Colorado, my father to hospice. Said we had a good run, didn’t we: boys? Just two, once: three. Border patrol lets me through. I say death runs in the family. Teach my daughters how to become an island. Keep me alive. Lay crimson bricks across the road so the postman can’t deliver more bad news. Move out of the house with the pond.
III.
Hand on waist, shake me awake. Barn fire in crimson. Georgia, no pond. Her. Hand on waist, school gym. Modern English. I melt with you, etc. Hand on hand on wedding band. Hold: your breath, hungry cloth, mouths catching. Sacrifice dragging behind the 1980 Landcruiser like tin. Don’t: open your eyes, jump in, cry in the rocking chair. Don’t: look in the rearview mirror. Move out of the house with the pond. Hand on waist when she. When they.
IV.
The trees hang off the earth to get a head rush–this is how I know to be a child. The pain of my head turning: red. Makes me glad I never was one. Crimson clutches the clear blue like handcuffs. Stiff-straight. Sit up: belted in a chair better than drowning. Pull the shutters on the sky, pan fry the earth in golden butter. Become: older. In name, not order. Erase the order, start over. Move out of the house with the pond. Drain the pond. Fill in the holes it made. Erase.
V.
(Stage direction: let him drown). Pray for him–jumping from the barn attic, static in your hair, hay: hush, we don’t speak his name, but–man: this place is a shithole. Erase faster than the record scratches, turn: tables; churn: butter; feet: patter bare, were you there? (Stage direction: burn.) Climb the ladder. (Did it matter?) Suffocating in kerosene lights, half lives, paint the marsh in crimson: too: scared to go home. Man: too young to understand, my–Dad? Trees can be cut down. The stump will always bleed, plead: complications. (Stage direction: do not resuscitate) I am returning to your homeland: shithole: family man: traitor.