Very Old Poem(s), 9 Millionth Rough Draft

This used to be about 3 poems and I just recently tried to fit them all together to the benefit of all involved. Still working on it though...

Your Mother Keeps Finches
for A.J.


Your mother keeps finches,
works all day
at the hospital
and smokes a bowl of
your sister's finest
when she gets home.
Sometimes you smoke it together,
then eat Chinese food
from metal trays
at the chrome-legged kitchen-table,
listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn
tear holes in a condom
with his high E string.
After dinner, she yells at the dog
for chewing on the bathroom tiles.
You cover the finches' cage
with a table cloth.
The basement is yours,
the walls have
become your cave paintings,
and it's where we went shot
for shot with shitty vodka,
and you told me about your father.

The next day you tell me
he’s getting electroconvulsive therapy.
Driving on Main Street,
crossing the other Main Street,
with three fingers on the wheel,
you look at me like
a fawn slipping on slimy creekstones
and say, “He gets to forget
everything he’s done to us.”
I lean back into the vinyl seat.
“No. He’ll still remember.”
The change on the dashboard
rattles,
and you won't meet my eyes.

On your mother’s desk
is a picture,
a school picture from
second grade. You are smiling,
but the blue overalls
are a snug fit
like his fingers.

You told me you tried to
boil your brains with acid
in an Olds stranded
on a field of clover,
Tori's Little Earthquakes repeating
as you cocked
and recocked
your anger.
Just you and a gun.

There have been whole years
we didn't talk,
a silence during which I was never comfortable
imagining where you were.
Another heavy
forearm. A sharp
cigarette. A tablecloth.
Even in the air,
escaping,
you do as much falling as flying.