morning

There is cream cheese and lox on the table

And Codie’s ghost romps within the fence,

Tongue too long to be contained.

At once the puppy smaller than a hand

And the 80 pounds my mother struggled to carry up those stone steps

Before dropping her on fresh stitches and crying in a puddle

At the bottom.

Big globules of snow are starting it all over again,

I do not have time for merry Christmas today,

If you get in my way I will continue on.

At the gym I think about nothing for 45 minutes.

My heartbeat shakes the world.

My vision jumps—black padded brillo to

an empty wine bottle. My father saying

“I am devastated” as if reading the summary off

the back of a dvd case.

I take off my shoes.

My whole body wants to throw this off.

His body is humped and solid as a hill,

Hands turned slightly in over the half inch mole

He refused to have removed, instead turning it into a button

That had to be pressed. His novel reads

A foot beneath the frozen dirt. He is resting in the city,

Letting his abdomen loose to recline in a chair that has become his bed.

His clients are all dead or in jail or free,

Roaming across the country in vans and broken down sedans,

Old tires spinning over a fresh laminate of snow.

His clients are all innocent, have not committed their crimes yet,

And he is a gi, drunk in a smoke filled plane

Playing poker a half mile above the heads of cows in Wisconsin.

He is at home lacing up his boots as the berlin wall falls.

He is walking outside in slippers and yelling “scat”

At the coyotes before grilling salmon.

He is 80 years old at the dinner table telling his grandchildren

To never trust crooked  republican scum.

He is hugging me tight and saying in my ear “just keep writing.”