Sticky on the fingertips not sucked because
it was in front of your mom, savoring
the pulp despite its white freezer-pocks—
she was saving it for me—you said
There’s a poem in that but how the fuck
could I write on command & have it
not be maudlin (they warmed me & I was
moved) or narrative ABCs, he grew &
dried them, died, we met & I ate your
grandfather’s Tanenashi persimmons?
Today I found out I could die, & maybe
in twelve years I will still be striking
this cowbell of tedium, still frisking
essays for shekels like a racist cop.
What do I know that my body does?
One day I am switching lanes at moderate
speeds, clutching my penis like a baby,
the next I have fallen asleep on a couch &
wake, the yoke & sleeves of time pulled
inside-out, on a glacial plain where
people cling like UPCs, living their best
anxieties. American flags burbling in
breeze speak beyond the pursed lips
of their raisers: Look like me or don’t
live. Look at the folded hands of one
who assembled bombs, the bomb factory
bombed, who with a needle & twine
strung fruit in his yard—for beauty, for
the pleasures of sucrose & habit. Years
fled, scattered, disguised themselves
as comfort, until now, here, where a
partnership of cardinals flit in a bare
Japanese maple that looks like a bald
man with his cap off. Yes, yes, we have
loved, killed, but the miracle is this
ordinary light, this tic of sweetness
in which I’ve moment to say—