Picture

Picture

Picture

   This is the house (and jungle-strangled yard I come from 
and carry.
   The air out here is supper-singed (and bruise-tingeing)
and close.
   From where I’m hid (a perfect Y-crotch perch of 
medicine-smelling sweet-gum), I can belly-worry this 
(welted) branch and watch for swells (and coming squalls) 
along our elbow-curve of river, or I can hunker-turn and 
brace my trunk and limbs—and face my home.
   Our roof is crimp-ribbed (and buckling) tin, and tar.
   Our (in-warped) wooden porch-door is kick-scarred and 
splintering. The hinges of it rust-cry and -rasp in time with 
every Tailspin-wind, and jamb-slap (and after-slap), and shudder.
   Our steps are slabs of cinder-crush and -temper, tamped 
and cooled.
   See that funnel-blur of color in the red-gold glass? 
—Mama, mainly: boiling jelly. She’s the apron-yellow 
(rickracked) plaid in there, and stove-coil coral; the quick 
silver blade-flash, plus the (magma-brimming) ladle-splash; 
that’s her behind the bramble-berry purple, sieved and stored.
   Out here, crickets are cricking their legs. Turtlets are 
cringing in their bunker-shells and burrows. Once-bedded 
nightcrawling worms are nerving up through beanvine-roots 
(and moonvines),—and dew-shining now, and cursive:
   Mama will pressure-cook and scald and pan-scorch and frizzle.
   Daddy will river-drift down to the (falling-down) dock.
   I myself will monkey-shinny so high no bark-burns (or tree-rats, 
or tides) or lava-spit can reach me.
   I will hunt for after-scraps (and sparks) and eat them all.