The Wifebeater

There will be mud on the carpet tonight and blood in the gravy as well. The wifebeater is out, the childbeater is out eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup. He strides back and forth in front of my study window chewing little red pieces of my heart. His eyes flash like a birthday cake and he makes bread out of rock. Yesterday he was walking like a man in the world. He was upright and conservative but somehow evasive, somehow contagious. Yesterday he built me a country and laid out a shadow where I could sleep but today a coffin for the madonna and child, today two women in baby clothes will be hamburg. With a tongue like a razor he will kiss, the mother, the child, and we three will color the stars black in memory of his mother who kept him chained to the food tree or turned him on and off like a water faucet and made women through all these hazy years the enemy with a heart of lies. Tonight all the red dogs lie down in fear and the wife and daughter knit into each other until they are killed.