Prayer with Torn Fingernails

Inside the cedar drawer, you
are the mineral

memory. The claw hammer’s
steel scent-stain.

Each moth-wing corner –
a place my fingertips

dissolve you accidentally.

*

I slip inside: an oyster shell. Dad,
I have been rinsed away. Dad, I am
the sulfur and the rancid shoreline.

Dad, I am what’s left. An oil-slick
saucer. Smooth and pearly worry
stone. Dad, I want you to know

I am benthic. Silt
that ribbons over wrist bone,
having lifted a teacup

from the lapping, brown river.
Dad, I wear a mud-drip
chin, my lashes

soak and glimmer blue
with summer’s luminary
plankton.

*

Here – the pinch of ballpoint ink.
Oil of house keys sealed

in a Ziplock. Here – your compass
clouded white with

wandering. Dad,

*

I could rub away in ribbons
and beads, the excess clay
until all that’s left is your forty-pound

head. Belly the width of a garbage
can. Jaw like a spring-trap, ankle
biter. Dad, I could sculpt you

out. Familiar as the story told
over wild rice and beans:
You were building trails

in Sangre Di Christo, sleeping
under narrowing spears of balsam fir.
A black bear traced the smell

of your toothpaste, rifled
through the tent as you lay, stricken
feet ahead. Son of a bitch

sat on my legs. Thought
I was dead for about five
minutes. Then off it went.

Dad, I want you to know. I am
brave, too.

*

I slip inside: a rusted nail. Stem
russet-feathered like slept-in
lipstick. Dad, I am

a turbulent winged seed, grit
in the maelstrom of your hazel eye.
My body is perfectly

ugly, Dad. Have you noticed,
we are all sort of old
and moly?

*

Here – your brass trumpet
glowing like the moon

in a velvet cloth.
Here – your voice like a purpling

fist. Voice to shake a mountain
down. Dad, I know

the map is wrong.

I want to press my thumbs against the twin
ridges that erupt between your brows.

Erase this.

*

I slip inside: a green-husked
walnut. Remember the photo

of me swinging buck-toothed
from the lowest limb? Mother

crouching over her eggplant, knuckles
rapping on your ground-level window.

Her voice like bright, packed
snow. A thistly speck

of pollen tunneled deep
into the temple bells. Their pious,

pink bonnets, ringing one
after one – come see

your daughter, she’s
as strong as you are.