Every two weeks or so                              she calls    serrated with confusion

says he is stealing from her      says he has never been any good     says he took the

money

the money is in the same place               my father in the same place

pacing the living room        slapping at his thigh      penance for the crime of being

a good son

the subtext is that: THE THIEF MUST DIE

what is stolen is almost always irrelevant comparative to the audacity

of the survival itself

every other week she calls the son          her last son         her only son

my Sisyphus sees the caller ID light up

he sees the boulder

but cannot turn away

I’m sure he could kill her

by sending it to voicemail

He never does

he returns to the city                    that he hates                       to reach below the bed

to play the good son

Now it is August again     and again     and again     he presses himself against her

The immovable weight of age

I watch him drive through the ridges of his own palms

Sisyphus’ subtext is: THE THIEF MUST DIE

LOVE IS A DEATH UNTO ITSELF

You think Sisyphus did not learn to love the boulder?

What else do you give the love

that flays

the soft from your palms?

On the TV   mere miles from my grandmother   a good son dies     it is too much

to ask

her to remember

A combination of a bullet and history cleaves his skull to fragments

something about Athena would confuse the metaphor here

I am grieving a stranger now

and perhaps always

The subtext is: THE THIEF MUST DIE

And in the midst of that my father watches        his ugly home contort in

the smoke

reminisces  with my grandmother  Them folk are at it again and she tells a story

about some not-Him she caught stealing and he got beat by the whole

neighborhood

the myth is almost sweet in its brutality

But then                           of course                                                      the boulder

She forgets he stole nothing until I am on the phone      my name honeying the palms

she swings

at my father’s memory

Every time after these calls my father sits on the balcony pulling from his E-cigarette

shucking death from a small halo          calls to me       Sisyphean with exhaustion

Before that happens, kill me. I would rather die than become her haunt you like that.

I know this draft of him well    I too see the boulder coming      he will never kill her

inheritance is a knife   a dull repentance in my palm   the subtext is:

THE THIEF MUST DIE

MY FATHER WATCHES FERGUSON VOL. 2

I saw something like this before

the eclipse I mean

broad daylight     disappearing

You know how the night hums?

not with god or the remnants

of a siren    just a choir in the dark?

Out here we call those cicadas

Well  every so often

bodies come up out the ground

thousands swallow the whole damn sun

that shit    that shit was biblical