Gossip said my father ran Eerie
The day my mother died
It was hidden from me. The rumors
About me inbred, my father
Inbred before me
My father preparing men
For burial
For graveflowers, it was Johnny—
Someone called me and said
It’s Johnny.
Run.
I was running,
Past the pub, its oleander
Blistered up the paved cracks, the scorched Bluff,
Blue ribbons on the lampposts no one took
Down after Christmas.
Past the boat ramp where Johnny asked
How do they make lakes?
This enormous
Sun rise on the endless—
Where we sank my father’s boat that 4am
Dumping buckets out, looking for life
Jackets, trying to get close enough
To swim back in the dark—
The controlled fires of the cornfields.
The slaughter lot and the grain silos.
Diamonds cut out of his mother’s shutters.
Methane pipes shooting through the dirt hill of the old dumps,
Eerie, I was running—
And there will be women in the street tomorrow talking
I know, and I will bend
My head down like I was the one
With my face burned by ropes of hot steel

—Christine Byrne

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