Always more comfortable among the strange,
prone to jump the garden fence at any startle,
I tossed no flowers upon my father’s grave
as he tossed no flowers upon my mother’s.
From eloquence to secrecy’s sublingual
inconsistencies of faith, I would, like math,
a more exotic womb in which to place
our fathers’ tongues for jaw’s own faults—
that vault wherein we all, gentle as a glass
of thunder in facile rat-skin glory, are born.
Death, that dog best undisturbed, that wonderfully
suffered child, Devastation’s blackened pit bull
enlarged by solvents’ hollow change, will gnaw
upon our moldering names.
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