When Daddy’s soldier friends told me to jump,
they shouted Cricket!, pointed fingers. They call
him that because he twitches at that slump
of sound, the calm after the fire. All
is well when hands are empty, clean. We laugh
in black stream march of shining cars, parade
with medal suns and me asleep in troughs
of sandpaper chest. I smell a seaweed prayer
on lips of mothers, now the watchers, now:
on mantis fingers curled in fists. Men want
to fill his eyes with vein, the sockets with snow,
the body with raw concrete and storm. They taunt
me in my dreams, hiss rhymes of slag and sweat.
Your cedar cheek in bloom is lit with wet.