Written by Kaci Skiles Laws
The mile walks. The promises.
Them both becoming foam
in the dirt before dark log hands,
arthritic around home
and the debris trail.
There’s dad.
trotting inside a dream.
He is good
at half-truths, good at leaning
under night, good at
sending his shadow to be a joker
under a minute moon, under a hard hat
on a machine we tried to name
between beams
and cogs and clots of mud.
His first picture
out of the halfway house—
not by choice. never is it a choice,
only Dad, the chore of who he is,
the licks of our perceptions,
the rotating eye,
the microscope we choke in our grips,
the pecan pie forming in the corners of
his preoccupied lips,
him never looking up but becoming
gnashing impulses as
we follow like
three shackles to a house that
will be vacant before the year dies.
Like the contents of dissolving capsules—
we are the litter of crumbs;
we are strewn and damp;
we are disregard in soil.
The bitter kids.
The promises.
Good one
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