At the gas station, fathers
whose knuckles bear scars
from years on a factory floor
scratch tickets, hope momentarily
awash in bleak fluorescence,
flashes of soft sand beaches
or red-chrome freedom or
something to hand their
sons before the anchor
drowns them, too –
You know what really
trickles down?
When she degrades
her own body, pushing her
plate away and cutting
herself apart in harshness,
jokes and complaints
piling up in the gaze of
her daughter, discovering
and pinching her little
stomach in wilting privacy;
or he toils, for years,
at a job that breaks him
of dreaming, drowning
the day’s weight in
pop-tab beer, amber
medicine, seething
in violet rage at the
notion that an
immigrant might dream,
might want, too;
or their concept of
god, who is perhaps said
to love, but whose most
clamorous devotees
revel in the anguish of
the oppressed, recoil
from the image of
a kiss between men,
make excuses for
brutish, stupid men
and their brutish,
stupid messes.
michael king 