in big prairie

do you remember the pulsing fuzzy

little aphids, the “snow-covered”

beech branches—gusting air to watch

the sea-saw sway of tail-ends

wiggling

or standing in the triangle of light (that hits the

center of your parent’s kitchen floor at 5:42 in

July) where we returned to the business of

disco?

I admit it. I rummaged through your childhood

collection of arrowheads, animal-skulls and soft

prismatic pink quartz.  that afternoon you returned

to your teenage-era punk-rock Christian love songs

while bats snaked and swooped, sketching wrinkles in

the pond

we dipped into after we settled on that rectangular

rock where you held my purple-mulberry-stained feet

remarking about my little

toe

barista haikus

The snap trap mundane

slap of minimum wage life

was murdering my

prefrontal cortex—

tamped and pulled and frothed into

nothing. Yep.  Nothing.

Watercoloring

with ballooned belly, jolly-

white-fur-faced “Santa”

between lattes was

sanity.  We quipped with words—

mostly in haiku-

form.  He was like my

grandfather.  I didn’t yet

know that raucous slurp

of entitlement. 

I did not know the slurring

sludge—the earth lust—how

later he would ask

if I would have a “quickie”

with him during work.

He was slinking slip-

shod switchblade “kindness”. Unzipped

synapses misfired.

I lacked pithy words—

boundaries to shed skin, to shake

off black cinder greed.

My anger teetered

between agency and help-

lessness.  The last won:

I simply asked his

order then made a caramel

mocha in silence.