--BUT YOU KNOW, YOU NEVER REALLY KNOW

Ways to Remember Birmingham

She gives her pets

street names—

 Hunter and Red Mountain,

   Oak, Valley, Tuscaloosa.

The gold fish are 1^st through 9^th Avenue.

She has the city tattooed across her chest so she can see

the campus in the mirror when she’s on top,

but the truth is

it’s been a long time,

and the fish are floating belly up

and the dog has diarrhea

and the embryo inside her has grown bad boy hair by now,

his hands and feet itching

to make their way into the world

with or without you,

you bastard.

The Rain in Birmingham

is wet luggage

that smells like hot bread

slathered with salty slabs of butter

that dribble bitter as your lips.

Your dad said he saw you

in a stole and shoulder-duster earrings.

I was wondering when you started liking ballet

instead of Birmingham

and boys like me,

born bearded and black-holed

so that rain shoots out ear-to-ear.

If you were here

you probably couldn’t stand the splatter

of all this inky oil that’s pooling

in my lap now,

taking the form of a head,

a face quite

similar to yours.

Molted

I keep leaving pieces of myself

in different rooms.

At first I think they are socks or candy wrappers

but one’s a finger and one’s a thumb,

and then there’s the issue of an eye in the sink,

two toes afloat in Dad’s old beer stein.

Wolfgang wails through the speakers

and I think he’s found my foot but instead it’s

in our Labrador’s drooling mouth.

I feel for my crotch and sigh because we’re still good there,

but then you walk through the door with a Chanel handbag

made of alligator and eel

and I recognize their color and stain,

the distinctive scars and skins of

your last boyfriends.