The overgrown weeds
                    and wilting wisteria
Defy the winter
                    by daring not to die—
Their seedlings spread,
                    spring, into a mess.

I would not call myself a Nazi sympathizer—
        What does that word even mean, sympathizer?
But ever since that time in the 4th grade
When my arch nemesis Maureen
Invited me to her birthday party,
I realized I needed to give more people a chance.
You’re probably thinking, well she’s not a Nazi.

My baby brandishes a wooden knife
meant to halve a wooden shallot
as he hollers his newest word. Knife.
Look at my son, flashing
his dagger, jamming it into plush
animals. Knife, knife. Look at him,
oblivious to the weapons
littering his lineage or, God forbid,
possessed by them.

The rest of us,
trembling among our mothers’
bargain trench coats, waited
for Narnia. There, we dreamed
we were the children
of lions. Heirs to our own beds.

Bags of ice drip from the back of a small bike
in Vietnam. The exhaust pipe rumbles. The man
sweats. My tongue melts. We are lucky we are not tiny
starving polar bears slipping off the last refuge
of ice into the black asphalt. The open
ocean. Or I should say we are lucky
the coming flood is incremental.

A hangover is a kind of prayer in which your last drink is the blood of the Lord, which is you, which is not a sustainable method of consumption. A cow can’t drink from its own utter. The body doesn’t move by itself.