His first father lived in Iceland,
gutting sheep until their throats blew
out like bubblegum or froze black
in the six-month winter. One March
his childish arms were stripped of bone
and Father taught him how to hold
your wrists still like fishing lines
as an opened lung presses back
against the knife, nothing left to steal
from them except their name or the stink
of liver. The hide had cooled tough
and the pink mouth spilled in tongues but
the boy\'s wrists stayed. Slabbed in a chair
ten years later he watched his Father
shit himself and talk about the lion,
the great golden lion he had seen.
His second Father was a girl
from Cornwall who collected shells
for a missionary in St. Ives.
She forced him over the altar
one night with vodka and dog-scents
lashed to her neck - slick muscles
gulped and held together until,
like a jumping fish leaping gold
and green in the sun, he felt black
sugar exploding through him, snapped
like a cheap ruler as confetti drifts
white and timeless through each room
of his house. Ten seconds can crush
the words like a fast truck riding
on the bridge of your throat, but fifty
years together is just coincidence.
His final father came one night
when an artery that had slept
inside his brain burst misfired
into ambulance disco lights
and a crimson mess on the kitchen
floor. In Haiti a phone sings like
Orpheus in the maple trees
and he wraps his hand around it,
his hand, his fingers, his muscles
pulling it up and he knows - fake wombs
lie and walk like thieves, we fall for them.
Sunsets lie, children lie,
even breasts and young women lie.
Only our one Heavenly Father
tells the truth - we need death, he says,
and the desperate final screams of the sheep.