Vista: unleaded
Lamb’s Wool
my niece warns us the house is haunted
by goats. her lisp, a flickering halo. we laugh about it
but never pray.
I walk in on my father as he pricks his finger
checking if his blood is communion wine.
the pain furrows his brow into the mark of cain
in this house every bed is an altar. my father’s hands shake
like Abraham’s. he can’t separate the lamb from the wool
without sacrifice.
we never forget why we worship, but sometimes who
my brother has a liver wrapped in scaffolding. he eats
of himself and drinks from strangers. most days his songs
stay trapped in bottles.
the glass sounds like serpent’s tongue when polished by the fall.
every time my mother opens the
family album it rains.
the storm makes God blink and leak sparks
her children all come together. decide to stop praying.
when you place a chandelier on the ground. it is just a mess.
I have a sister who left home. we’ve tried to dial her number
on a ouija board. the mention of her name unrests the spirits
turns all the picture frames on their sides
another haunting my niece can't pronounce
I have a sister who died. her name sounds like
a single pill rattling in a bottle.
sometimes my mother calls
out to her while sleeping
my father checks his sugar and his shadow
I have one sister who lived and stayed. she is made
of smoke. most days, makes my mother
pray more
choke more.
my mother opens the album to put out the fire
that must be alive in her.
Love in Consecutive parts
a man stood on a platform and sang
like he gave the woman he loved
a bouquet of all his bones
and she instead married a man
who sent flowers
he sang like their last kiss never repeated itself
he held every note gently
like the song was asleep in his lap
and his voice
was a hot-comb running
through its hair
he kissed a slave-ship into the belly of a bottle of
whiskey once
cause he wanted the song to hurt like orphans
some things only repeat themselves
if you conjure up the right love song
every note was the one when the boy asks
the girl to dance and the girl says no
loud enough to stop all the music in the boy’s head
every night he undoes
time with the way he holds a bottle
he knows that everything can look
like church if you are close
enough to the ocean
especially a lover
who lied small as a bullet
but big as its consequence.
2
17 years of waiting leaking through his eyes
he was whiskey and slave-ship spin the bottle
he wanted to slip into a song like a night gown
soft as an endless eve
all his lovers made him sweat like nightmares
he named his window eden and hoped
the fall would be as sweet
as a darkroom where he practiced coming undone
and asked a cigarette
to be a candle
he gets to the bridge of every song
and jumps
all of his demons are instruments
a harmonica is just a throat pulled from
a body mid song
he is just a man being haunted
by another man’s throat
his love is arriving on a train in some city
may not be now
or this one
but he is singing heavy enough to haunt her
that his ghost may worship her close
the train is arriving
and though he won't board
he is leaving the station
Church in a bottle
Part 1
The prettiest girl back home was Rochelle
but her daddy cleaned his gun by the window
not their window. My window. He would eat
chicken down to the gristle
and spit the bones into a Hennessy bottle
and make a chapel.
Between the bottle and the bones was an apology
climbing into a prayer. A hymn held hostage
between his lips inviting the smoke of
a woman he once knew––who could do no wrong
who did him wrong she was a burning church dressed like a dance floor
She moved her hips like she borrowed shoes
and her knees kissed barbed wire
just to get here.
Every night in remembrance of her, he holds a bottle
by the neck long enough to find a pulse, and is known as a drunk.
But he's just found a new way to catch the holy spirit
Don't you act like you ain't never seen a church shaped like a liquor cabinet before
he drinks until his stumble is a praise dance––until his stutter speaks in tongue.
Rochelle wasn't shaped anything like her daddy's shadow on my porch
No. She wore the kind of dress small enough
to clean a gun with we slow danced close
enough––that every whisper is sin
every prayer was a melody with a ghost in it.
I held her too close for her father to shoot
I held her too close for her father not to shoot
2
I'm dreaming her lips again. This is the one where her bed is a
church pew and the pastor says look at your neighbor and say praise.
I admit some nights I've drowned in a new testament’s worth of wine
woken up next to her and said amen cause I believe in God.
But never thought I could pray this close.
Sleep is the cousin of prayer,
don't go to bed with anyone you’re
afraid of worshiping
I am done with sin and sorrow
she makes Sunday feel September long, but I haven't slept since.
3
You said you don't believe in god. But you know these demons are real
Cause faith is less about who you want to believe in
and more about who comes to visit.
I’ve renamed time––water and drowned in it.
I renamed whiskey–– time and spent all of it on you.
I renamed music––whiskey and played the same bottle on repeat.
I know that all I have
don't amount to much,
but one man’s trash
is another man's tithe
I don't know if we meant to be the sky
or just fall from it.
Isn’t Gravity the deadliest sin?
The last time you blew me a kiss my heart shattered like a dandelion
I fell in love with you between the shoulders of every love song
and heaven is that song on repeat. We can kiss until the bands stops.
Until your father loads his gun
Until the lights come on
Until you’re close enough to make eternity
out of this moment.
And don’t we deserve that kind of scripture.
Don’t we deserve that kind of magic.
Aren’t these sheets better
for the rapture than any bible.
Love is a game we played to keep from dying alone.
Did we win?
