by Karen R. Porter
it’s his dead son
hanging from his fist
like a flower
not a hammer
not directions
to a shortcut
out of town
it’s his son
thin and papery
dried out
by the wind
rattling through him
there had been chances
no one knows
how it happened
if it was
deliberate
everyone
is afraid to talk
both faces now
are sunken leather
he forces words
goes through the gestures
and rasping in his grasp
his son speaks
with a lizard’s
arid tongue
Published in Not One of Us #29, March 2003