Fav’rite Childhood Memory #2

Still awake, the sun was dead.
The cheap moon in the parlor
was a silver coin. I heard

Dad from bed, his nighttime hollers.
I put my head on a pillow
I bought for Mom but it outlived her.

The dog died at four,
and a willow tree died as well.
Water boiled in the hollow

branches and after the willow fell,
the others, too, fell. The trees
bowed in rows, the branches knelt

in rows between. Lonely places—
the metal shed behind the house,
dad’s tools and shitty faces,

and the picture frames. What an ass
in his bed, nothing but bad
in his head, just a ton of shit and puss.

That night, all young and mad,
I lay naked on the grass
until the sun, alive again, was red.

Fav’rite Childhood Memory #1

Awake and the sun smelled like bed.
It looked red. There were lint specks,
planets orbiting a thread

of choice: to dress,
or not to. But I want to stay there
in my head in bed and undress

further to cuddle the dear
colors of heroes, escape
the shouting Dad’s worn to outwear.

Some crumbling fabric: his toupee,
cookie crumbs bouncing on the sheets,
wind splitting shards of glass. Okay:

So, I suck them up and curl to speak
of the beer cans on the lawn,
the piles of nickels, all mine to keep!

I might’ve found the pawn
from the set Dad threw when drunk
through my window into a cracking dawn.