Go ahead and squeeze, but not before you put on some tea, clean two cups, lift shades and pin back curtains. Not before the end of this song, before dawn reaches in, before you turn the page or a woman apologizes for dialing the wrong man again—not before you learn her name, how to pronounce it, how to sing it with and without regret catching in your throat—Are you done? Go ahead and squeeze after the hinges are reinforced on all doors, the house secure from storm or intruder, your laces tied, this commercial break over, drywall taped, spackled, painted—a nail driven, a painting hung and adjusted—there is still so much to adjust, arrange, there is still time—and you write your letter, correct every letter, scrawl the signature so swift and crooked it becomes the name of another—relax the jaw that holds the barrel in place, remove gun, point to heaven, and squeeze until the clip is empty like the chamber.

And Even the Living Are Lost

And Even the Living Are Lost

Pigeons scrap over a crust of bread while feathers

fall into filthy runoff water. The gutter spits them

down the throat of a sewer. The sewer gives us nothing,

the curb at least returns the dice.

Today, it is meaningless to look for your fist,

there, shaking until the rattle of bones

sounds like winning. You wanted to see clean water

someday, eat sambussa in Ethiopia and fumble

a foreign tongue. Now, in prison, you are as far away

from Dexter Ave as you’ve ever been.

Yesterday your son pressed his nose to the screen door

to watch a gaggle of baseball caps crowd the sidewalk.

The bones did what bones do.

Streetlights buzzed with their particular sadness.

The last night of your last free summer, streetlights

added a sickly orange glow to the shimmer

of guns, slippery with sweat, so your son could see

the casual havoc of it all. He watched the teeth

of handcuffs close around your wrists the way

a perched bird watches: quiet, flinching at slight sounds.

The dice game erupts, a bottle shatters, a door slams shut

and the sound ricochets off pavement, darts off

like some worried pigeon while your son stares at us.

How long has he been staring at us?

Aichmophobia: Fear of Needles

Aichmophobia

Fear of Needles

Understand, uncle, I learned the plunger

of a hypodermic needle fit neatly in the hands

of action figures before the first time

I had my blood drawn.

Maybe this is why I couldn’t make sense

of my sister’s trembling legs as we waited

for the crooks of our elbows to be needle-kissed.

There’s so much I didn’t know then:

how much fear I needed to carry,

the definition of skin flute,

why the back of my hand was struck

after I found, lying in woodchips,

what I thought would make a sturdy sword.