The Drinking Bird
O brother
I thought that we were bound
in this together, your suffering, mine.
Victims as porous as sponge.
But the nether thread of you
wove like a needle through my mouth
sewing it shut for forty years.
Drink drink
I am the perpetual
bird, I pivot with
paper eyes and top hat,
the red liquid of my body rising into
my head until I can't
think, falling back
like a shot of
scotch
toward my heart
where I can't feel.
O mother
your complacent voice
intimate with pain and on the prowl
while my swollen lip battered by habit
blooms, hard as a callous.
But I can close my eyes
and I can bow spread-eagle
on a sacrificial crosspiece for you.