in a pit on a hill with a black snake run up
the tree like the flag of this country.
He sermonized an afterlife without peril.
Afterwards, we walked a mile through blight
and found a hawk on a dumpster behind the Chinese

restaurant. It was still morning, but we could smell
last night’s braised pork hanging from its beak.
To him, we were no bother.
His head dipped in and out of plastic bags
like a torch that can’t be extinguished.

We settled into a cantina booth a few blocks
up the road. The footsteps of the waitress
startled me, and I felt I was being over dramatic.
Like how my father waited years for the mechanic’s
whiskered prognosis, timing belt, thermostat

housing, sway bar, junkyard. The dead
abdicate these small privileges and disintegrate.
The gastronomy of hills takes over.
I ordered what passed for huevos rancheros
and went to the bathroom.

Pissing on that blue urinal cake felt nothing like Greece.
I never was a supplicant to Achilles.
My education was public.
The Mississippi creased the back of my country
like the spine of an open book titled patriotism.

I never fought pigeons for scraps to call breakfast,
never plucked the whites out of a man’s eyes
in new issue boots. I daydreamed women
underneath a cherry tree, traversed
the glory of blue afternoon skies,

5

  

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