Brad Trumpfheller

again i make the boy again from dirt & daffodils : everybody

knows the story. saint whatever. all-country effigy.  he stood

in front of me in a parking lot             with flowers in his hair.

my knees like knots in the mulch.                his zipper tasted

like a zipper.       years later i tell a room full of people i love

that he died drunk behind the wheel of a car  :  or he was hit

by the car   :   or he was the car   dim-eyed engine spun out

on the side of the road  : or was it by the gas station on 11th

his veins dull & drawled with the same pills [          ] sold me

:                                                             none of this is tender.

don't believe me.        there was never a boy until there was.

there was never a landscape       until it was stolen & written

into song.  in a poem i will never publish i point at the grass

& everyone i love begins digging their own graves.  & again

i am making this about me.  the way a boy might take metal

in his mouth & blame everything after on shame.      or how

even the living when buried can be used    to hold up a flag.