I’ve never told you
how my father tied
a drunk man to a chair
 
and snapped the first four fingers
on his left hand.
 
How the moon,
a sickle soaked in milk,
hung center the window
cracked from frantic birds
 
and how the man, his dad,
howled like a stray in the hills
the boys’ bragged of maiming.
 
You might be wondering
what happened to the fifth finger
his thumb
 
and whether it stayed straight
or faced a similar form of fracture.
 
But none of that matters.
 
In the time it’d take
to detail a thumb pried loose, I
 
could move from the shed
to the house
a quarter mile north,
 
where my nana
swirls salt in soup
 
and sways her hips
to Elvis, John Prine.
 
How can she dance
when the dead crawl inside?
 
How can she dance
with a body branded,
owned by a beast, a belt
that blooms the tremors?
 
Believe when I tell you
the fifth was spared.
 
That my father
ran out of whisky
out of spite,
 
stopped soothing with blood
sought light
 
and stepped out
deeply hidden, an animal
crazed for water.
 
That he found in his search
an oasis,
 
and there
lapped stars until shame clotted
concealed
 
spread like yeast through
his heart.
 
Sometimes that’s all
that it takes. One taste.
One. For deadwind
 
to enter and eat
the insides
 
of a boy of a boy
of a boy of a boy
of a boy of a boy
of a boy—