Time Is a Mother

Then it came to me, my life. I remembered my life

the way an ax handle, mid-swing, remembers the tree.

& I was free.

these

corpses I lay

side by side on

the page to tell you

our present tense

was not too late

reader I’ve

plagiarized my life

to give you the best

of me & these words these

insects anchovies

bullets salvaged & exiled

by art

reader who

cannot read

or write you wrote a son

into the world with no

words but a syllable so much

like a bullet its heat fills you

how can I say the hole

in your brother’s back is not

a part of your brother but your brother

aparted who is still somewhere

running because I wrote it

in the present tense

you said you named me

after a body of water ’cause

it’s the largest thing you knew

after god

if reading is to live

in two worlds at once why

is he not here

I was born

because you were starving but

how can anything be

found with only two hands

I made a killing

in language & was surrounded

by ghosts. I used my arsenal

of defunct verbs & broke

into a library of second chances,

the ER. Where they bandaged

my head, even as the black letters

kept seeping through,

like this.

No One Knows the Way to Heaven