you love to say these things make you angry.

anger is free. shake any body and it falls out

 

of their ears in ash and sharp stones. you feel

i haven’t stumbled onto more anger than i can grip

 

in two fists, in the bridge between them, across

their straining forearms trapped against my chest?

 

anger is water. anger is the flesh and the juice

hiding in the fruit of the tree of the knowledge

 

of good and evil, anger is what we do when we see we can’t

get good, anger is what we spit out when the sun rattles

 

against our evil, you feel i haven’t seen good girls

and tired fathers press wine out of that shit by just

 

chewing slowly on it and letting it slide out into

a bowl for everyone to take a sip in remembrance of

 

somebody house or somebody boy-child or somebody

gone too soon or somebody here but as if they were

 

always gone? all o’ we have something we wish

we could take a claw out the back pocket for.

 

take this: you see something in the news, you see

something in the magazine you open at the dentist’s,

 

you see something on the front page but you don’t spend

the three dollars to see all of it because you say you’ve seen

 

enough. what do we plan to do about it?

like we not man enough, mad enough, made of sturdy stuff

 

to change it. i am here to tell you:

anger is free. you’ve been rubbing up against the tide

 

all the time. maybe you hadn’t seen.

none of the news is new. the bullhorns are simply shinier.

 

what you see is revelation, in both senses of the word.

i am here with sharp pieces on me to strip whatever

 

you were thinking about when you came out the maxi.

i am here to pour water, juice, wine, flambeau fire, whatever.

 

i am the sound of you ignoring the sound.

i am the sound of you saying you thought it was something else.

 

i am the sound of you saying why you go fib on

somebody who just trying to make sure you could live the kind of

 

life I didn’t ever know?, I am the sound of expensive things

breaking only for you to learn you never owned such a thing,

 

I am the uncounted step of the staircase, the tree branch you

didn’t notice

the other day, the cupboard door that grew wider from the hinge

last night.

 

I am drunkenness from flambeau. my skin is covered in

tufts of i don’t know. i walked here from the space

 

between i wish something would change and i don’t know

why he would say something like that. and lemme tell you,

 

i thought this procession would be terrible, but

you only turned the corner once and here we were.

i am dragging the evidence to your front gate

in a coffin only you can see, i have it chained

 

to me so it can’t ever get away from the sun. there is a

pomerac tree growing from your daughter’s pillowcase,

 

and i am the thing that snaps at anyone who tries

to pick from it. even you, who wishes the fruit

 

would talk to you for once. i am the missed phone call

from the principal, a thick loom of crimson wool

 

unspooling deep within the static. i am your neighbour

in the street with she rollers in she hair still, suddenly

knowing

 

your son’s name, and i know your son’s name, i know

your daughter’s name, i growl them into the dirt like seedlings

 

whenever someone uses the words failed them in a sentence,

i traded my own name for them all, i traded the name of some

 

boy whose classmates say but ent life sweet? when he wants

to say he wishes this woman he don’t know would stop smiling

 

at him. i don’t get to be remembered, so i don’t get to be

buried, so I don’t get to die. so you don’t get to forget.

 

there is a rotting mango tree growing from a bracelet

your best friend forgot was lingering beneath their schoolbag.

 

i bury screams beneath the roots. i hear the night

chirp out who you were supposed to love the whole time.

 

The sound of their names, of the word relative, of the word

pastor, of the word authority, bitter in your mouth like

 

you made your tongue a patient cask. i am the sound of

that’s not what they said clattering to the floor. i am the

sound of it

 

scraping back up the walls and making decisions. there is a

chennette

tree growing from the part of his mouth he tears at when you say

 

that if she hit you then you must-be look to get hit. i tear

into

the seeds, pull out gold locket chains and old letters with the

ink

 

smudged. you see it and insist that you will never let that

stand.

but when you’re asked, where are your claws?, you wipe your

hands

 

of every notion. these are your claws. I am here to keep your

hands

clean. all you have to do is admit it and keep still.

© 2020 Brandon O'Brien