Bring Me a Horse

  Instead of bending spoons with our thoughts, we broke
            popsicle sticks with our fists. We didn’t have beards yet,
                      so we slathered our faces in mayo and shaved
            with butter knives. This was called tasting the world
                      with our skin, and this was called happiness times ten.

  Someday we would need a hefty supply of poison,
            so we peed in a wine bottle and added Tabasco
                      and dirt and dead crickets and let it cook in the sun.
            We blew up anthills to prove we weren’t wimps,
                      stuck pins in our palms to prove we weren’t ghosts.

  We spoke pig latin at lunch and tried
            summoning the dead in our underground fort.
                      This was called speaking in tongues, and this
            was called hocus-pocus for novices. Then Ty’s dad died.
                      At the viewing I touched his hands and thought:

  He has no blood, has no blood, has no blood. . . .
            And that night those of us who still had fathers
                      visited the river, and no matter what we asked,
            it grumbled the same sludgy answer: I’m tired of spiders
                      and flies; bring me a horse, a horse, a big black horse.

  This was called listening to the gods,
            and this was called how to keep our dads
                      alive and cussing. Instead of a horse we found a rusty car
            in a field and popped it out of gear and pushed
                      it over the bank. It splashed, then gurgled and glugged

  its way to the muddy bottom. And the river
            absolved us, rain kissing our heads all the way home.