Winner of the Jon Tribble Memorial Award in Poetry

​

I am my mother, Marlboro in her mouth,

who sits on the patio as locusts rasp

in the trees, a cactus near the crook of her foot,

 

and I am my grandpa’s death certificate,

precious in her palms—

homicide, blunt trauma to back of head.

 

In those bleak boxes, I am his hands locked

around my great-aunt’s throat

and his skull cracked

 

by an axe handle swung

and swung and swung and swung—

hair and haft, blood and brain.

 

Between grins, I am a cigarette ashed against an arm

of a patio chair and my mother’s voice,

prouder than the wind: he cut off his finger once

 

to prove he was tougher’n his brother,

fed it to our dog. So now I am

pocketknives through flesh and phalanges,

 

the wide white flash of a mutt’s wet teeth,

and an instinct to lop myself piecemeal

for want of nothing back.

 

These traumas we unspool like guts,

heap on our shoulders like victory laurel.

This is the lineage we write across the night

 

as cigarette ash winks out

on a breeze. This is the apology

we do not offer each other.