Wax
And so she had to
Burn his paintings,
All the way down to the wick
All the way down to their Bed-Stuy bones
Doodle © Luigi Scarcella
I am the pith of scar
A pearl that thickens like
The meat of an Airtimes pear
My words are only little finger,
Only thinner
Only papa’s ring.
I let boys suck my lemon mouth,
The landscape of my tooth and tongue
The new frontier, they build their names in my breath.
So I may say I, “his hair, his eyes” (when I really like something.)
I will forget him.
The yellow couch has turned black
From inhaling the exhaust fumes of my father’s clothes,
He lives in epitaph,
“Call me genius. Say you love me.
Remember who I was.”
His first wife went cold on a Thursday.
She froze to death in the shadow of his back.
The second one, the one I chipped from,
Told me she was tired of his jaw and his misanthropic shuckel.
And so she had to
Burn his paintings,
All the way down to the wick
All the way down to their Bed-Stuy bones
In the room he shared with
His sisters.
I won’t forget him.
My papa is the last of his language.
He speaks dirty needle—Hiroshima.
When children metastasized in their Brown stones.
I asked the brass bull why it used an old heart like a cue cup.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t
Forget him.
