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Lollygag. His favorite word,
now his mouth like the entrance to a cave,
stalagmites all around, stalactites falling
toward the ground. His son called it
a punching bag, the thingy
in the
back of his father’s throat
saw a lot those days,
those metal-on-metal lazyboy Sundays,
the other days, too,
the grey-hair days.
And his
tongue, imagine,
rolling out like red carpet, how it must be
a few hours before the Oscars,
elegant then rolled away
until the next big night of glitterati,
or also,
that tongue, possibly
flickering like a snake’s,
maybe a dragon’s
but without the fire—
the son is six, absolutely terrified of fire.
While
he sleeps, the father,
head tilted like a hand of poker
fanned out too far, the sister sneaking
peaks to whisper across the table—
don’t do that, sister—
on his
billowing chest lays the ferret,
call the ferret, here kitty
kitty kitty, here kitty kitty,
come on kitty. Ferret. It’s a ferret.
To jump into water from ten stories
is not
much different than jumping
ten stories into concrete.
The same mess everywhere, and,
rushing into heaven, the same mess,
but at least no lollygagging.
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