My Father Says

it’s just me over here with glass in my eye – make cups with your hands he says – fill them like chalices or buckets for blood – pull that top eyelid down to your knee – blink– and again – 

no more talking to fireworks he says – you’ll go damn blind – it hurt to cry but I did because I know that I stole them from the basement with jason – our blood was pumping and we’d been wrestling too close to the fire hydrant again – someone’s going to crack their damn head open he says – there it goes – call an ambulance you fucking retards – 

threw a football at his face and he beat the damn pulp out of me and I felt clear again – like GOD was busting through my chest with a light so big it punched my spine into place – fucking FINALLY I screamed – my neck was no longer stuck out like a crow – my arms no longer needling and thin –

that was the day I fell asleep in church with my arms burrowed up underneath a polo t-shirt – that was the style – that was cool back then – it was the same summer I threw jason off of the canoe and left him to drown in the lake – he’d called me a fag but it wasn’t true and he swam home and beat the living shit out of me – my father says that’s what you get – you asked for it – you –

and there’s still glass in my eye when I speak because jason works at the bank downtown and takes pictures of his girlfriend – she wears bikinis that get me hard – has a lot of blonde friends – she caught him –

he lives in a house made of songs with a massive lawn I thought kids our age couldn’t afford yet – and I’m still just me over here – breathing out – talking to fireworks again – burning the hair on the insides of my thighs – because I never learned to shave –

three years ago my father brought me a copy of the collected works of mark twain in the hospital – I never told jason that I was back in town – it was the same hospital where I was born –

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When We Went to Disney© We Didn’t See Disney© 

and I’m glad we didn’t see Disney© – we drove all the way through Disney© but never stopped there once – we had planned a lot and had oh the places to go but nonetheless they were never in Disney© – and that was what we loved –

we stayed in a quaint little B&B on the outskirts of Disney© where they brought food to our room on little white plates and wore cute little white aprons with The Mickey Mouse™ on them but still insisted that they weren’t from Disney© – 

after that we drove and stayed in a little shack in someone’s paved backyard – tucked away in the corner of a nice suburb with watering cans and vines pouring out over the door with trees that shaded our drinks – 

the people that hosted us were never from Disney© or had anything to do with it – they all had smiles on and had two shiny cars in their driveways and had jobs that they were always going to – protest signs on their lawns – 

our limousine driver’s family came to this place on the Oregon Trail® a hundred thousand years ago and had never heard of a god damn Disney© – and that was strange –

the only thing we ever saw that definitely was Disney© was the way the D was always capitalized in Disney© – that D was scratched on to everything around us – it was sold on every t-shirt in every store – flags with it flying fucking everywhere – as far as the eye could see – 

and I’m still not comfortable with talking about Disney© because I’m still unsure if I have ever been to Disney© – and that was what we loved –