He forgot to carve his name onto it—my slow-dead
womb builder. So he thatched this house with reeds
as presences and struck cymbals.

I gave its shambles to the fire, heaped its mar and its
lime, and the skeletal birdcage of it into the memory
of a tongueless August mouth.

Its chasm, a door—its screen porch, a belching Madonna.
Thin-torn frankincense fumes like god-blood from the split
of its rarefying wound, where the

whole of purgatory is a scent of goulash and of low mur-
murs; the sin of knowing, a Clorox-tinged swimming pool
rash and the sponge of wood rot.

the rattletrap where i watch
in flesh-colors quiet as the static
on play-slides gallop to a cutlass.

and decrepit with me in a malibu
it rusts in happy meals. bloats on
a warm backseat corpse savoring
in fragmented leather castled by
dehydrated fries like blades.

a baby tooth
unfastened…