Let young uncle Vladimir explain it all.
He sees the fold between two halves and the intersex dove.
When we visit him in the ward, he’s somewhat watercolored,
not like a dream-washout but something made by chance: hoar roses.
The one we mourn, the walnut spirit, hit him.
She might’ve hit the animals, the cow. This hitting’s in me,
the early drinking, starlight nailed in. Grown over with the peach fuzz of anorexics
the lung I claim to use to write this (puke). Long fur of dust.
The clearest part of that memory is: we visit him and he has sheets for wings,
and predicts I’m wolf and that I’ll hit my child,
or so his eyes tell me: the iris-wife roars drunk on the tavern bench.
It’s a family thing to choose lionesses
then cut them up for coupons.
And if the words don’t come back, I’ll bang together
some plywood boxes and write across each: water,
rolling pin, friend. These objects will be the bezel-settings for things
to move back into, and then I’ll move into the things. In other words,
I’ll do as words do:
kill me so I’ll live.