The only problem Michael had with his father the chiropractor was his mother the psychiatrist

Dead elephants and imperialism husks run through by bullet.
Cracked wishbone like a tent
Lost its leg in war.
Face forward and play
Dead with me.
The root of which caused my people to fuck your people. (Diagnoses: let me spit down the shower drain.)

He called me
The B-word
Says a Kindergartener.

Motherfucker,
Says another kindergartener,
Doesn’t start with a B.

Look,
We covered M
A week ago
With sheets like ghost.
Cut two eyes out,
It was last in line for lunch.
Remember that day?
You appeared
out of nowhere?

Essentially, I was stolen
into existence.
Aren’t we all?
Like a bad word
Hurled from an innocent mouth.

And here I am giving
Myself scoliosis again by walking
On these winding streets in the dark.
My posture is as follows:
A constant inward lilt.

My mother, bless
Her daffodil heart,
Thinks it’s from the sadness.
Like there always has to be a reason
An elephant’s left lung
Collapses somewhere
And its children cemetarize
Their mother with savannah flowers.
And

To clarify:
Imperialism like we’re all an invasion
To ourselves.
Tanks roiled into and through
Acres run knife elbow-deep like tuna
Fishermen doctoring vertebrae on muddy docks. Muddy
Days where I spun myself into a knot.
People forget, but the land remembers
Arteries, tying neatly
One place to another. The most delicate of bows
On the shoe of a ballerina. Or a ribcage
Locking fingers with itself: lacing pie crust
like our constant need for twine. Like my spine
Xylophone’d and snarled around finger,
curled like corded-telephone
Wire corked up to coil.
Maybe it’s the lack of sleep
Mother reasons.
Maybe, I prophet,
Repair trashed wishbones.

Father, lay your hands
On my back
And teach me how to lie
Posture all correct on my bed.
Remember that day I put my hand over your cup
To root my spin? I lost my leg
Among some ferns and now tent around half-pitched. (Diagnoses: how sad)

And maybe next time, Kindergartener, don’t tell
The teacher
What I said when you asked
Did you grow up sleeping?
With that back?
On a waterbed?