Days of Mercy

I strangled my broken memory of a horse
Into a clod of potter’s clay, painted it poorly:
Victory red when wet, now spiced mud.
The others eat potatoes without salt.
One fries onions in the bottom of the kettle.
I, their idiot father, inhale the fat in the air,
And rub my heavy bread-and-beer gut.
Today I was a sun dog, waiting restlessly to rise
At noon, alongside my mother, and puncture the sky.
Though my cue never came. Hurt,
Like the paunched rabbit hung up
Before me, I watched my blue entrails
Thud onto the wood-effect vinyl flooring.
My surrogate Turk aunt warned me,
Of the dangers of painkillers in times like these.
I explained, it’s only for my skull-splitting
Aches and the bulging pain behind my eye
That brewed last night, while I overslept,
(Dreaming of impostors in the NBA
And the end of days). So I chew the pill,
Readying up for my 4 o’clock early
With the rottweiler who beams back at me
From the wet, black mouth of my boiler room.