Heirloom
The back of my tongue aches all the time
pulling and bending her into different animals
braiding all my many personhoods together
under the tight blanket of her tissue
She is exhausted from clicking and pruning
trying to coax the poison
that makes my brothers
glisten
thinking the right pattern of word might liberate them
from this —
our father’s heirloom
Rage
But it is the only substance keeping them upright
fish food slurped down from the meniscus they swim in
While the sisters and wives thought ourselves immune
to the chemical structure of such furry
we did not object when it was dabbed to our lips
beget itself in our bellies
and made soot and ash of everything within
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Rage hollowed out memories, selves
till we were left as only the outline of women
with the hacking of trapped dogs
chewing at the bars
bleeding from our gums
We rolled hate between our fingers for so long
it churned itself to grief
A heavy syrup
rolling down the walls, dripping off tables
keening all over this house
The only viable fantasy left
to pull from such sorrow
is
revenge
But we know
Their bodies
Our bodies
Your bodies
We are all just cowards — children
begging to be made safe
with miles of nerves
mapped out across a desperate, tiny spirit
and gunpowder keg hormones
bursting against the walls of our chests
wishing us into heroism
wishing us into revolutionaries
and yet I see no peacemakers.
I want so much to feel the soft touch of god
slowly pulling a cool scarf across my face
before I have to watch those I thought kindred
tear the kingdom down to the studs
not to rebuild, as it turns out
but to drown each good architect in fallacies
find audiences who will keep their voice
atop an algorithm built on fear
and committ me to a memory of what people were
before we always saw each other, but never heard.
When does retribution stop feeling righteous
and we learn that the Ouroboros is not always rebirth
but rather self-mutilation
handing our hate back and forth, back and forth…
And when you scream for freedom and hear an echo
do you know it is not because the space around you is vast
but because the walls are so high?
