Sestina Written as Though Genesis

Remember that the Christmas lights are gorgeous around your wrists

until your wrists are burning. Most things are like this, beautiful

until they are no longer beautiful—gun metal before it’s a gun,

volcano before it’s an evacuation. One man’s dinner is another man’s

meal if someone is desperate and hungry. The world is ruthless. It’s moonrise

again. And of course, I’ve held a gun in one hand, dead animal in the other.

I’ve buckshot through an aorta and regretted it. I’m from just another

American valley dense with opioid smoke. Yes, I’ve checked the wrists

of my father doped well into the sky—his eyes white as clouds lit in moonrise.

Yes, I’ve tried to exorcise all my roots from the Pennsylvania thicket. But it’s beautiful

that I’m still all bramble and picker bushes. You know how it goes, every man

I know has bragged about severing a snake’s body from its head, and about his guns.

III

Not much survives in rural America. Though it wants to. My father buried some guns

in the hillside, and I’m sure he’ll be back. The reflection of a window in a window is merely another

opportunity for escape. When I was young, I climbed trees for vantage and watched as men

pulled wind from the air and left empty promises. Honestly, all the hope I kept in my wrists

must have worked just as well as blood, because I’m still here and warm-bodied and beautiful.

Now, I doctor the thunder on Photoshop and just like that the storm is half over. It’s moonrise.

And yes, when I speak about my partner it is hyperbole, the pigs flying over a rising moon,

the unicorns entering the horse race. And it is all true. When I met my partner, I took the gun

I kept in my body, out of my body, and I have never felt lighter, and less full of metal. How beautiful

that we sung our first duet in a swamp. My partner confused an alligator for just another

basilisk and I asked them to marry me. Photosynthesize me for the next century. Kiss my wrists

until they clot. My partner recognizes my boot print in snow as mine, and we are always teaching men.

Something about love. Something about union and compromise. I want to invite all American men

to our wedding. Someplace where water meets sand with its arms open. We’ll marry at night, the moon risen

and reflecting the sun’s blushed skin. We will size our ring fingers and tie silkworms around our wrists

that will stay tied for as many decades as we can muster. Bring your Pop Rocks and know the love that’s begun.

When my partner says sauna, sauna, I know that means soon, soon. Every day, I show my mother

this love in my cupped hands. I tell her, now, even the chipped paint on the windowsill is beautiful.

The worst of my life is the rust I grow in the nail clipper, what a blessing that is. Humans want to be full

of anything at all. And it might as well be affection, dandelions, and letting the boat take you, unmanned,

to float wherever you’re headed next. All gold is just an echo of your feet on the ground. Who were you in another

life? Do you remember? I have spent all my lives waiting for unmade sheets, cross-breezes, and this particular sunrise.

There are no wolves left to cry wolf in my bed. I only hear the music of the leaves. Finally, the god I pray to has begun

to record spin on the weekends. God drops the needle and of course it’s house music, each beat finding its way to my wrists.

VII

When I was young, I would watch my mother split firewood, the only warmth in all that snow. Beautiful

is a mother’s love for her child in a parking lot—hand tight around a wrist. One day soon, all humans

will know is the heat of the atmosphere, desperate love, and the relief of the moon rising. We know what we’ve begun.