I take my doggy Papa Legba out for a walk, dirty red bandana tied low around his throat. His gait is all twos on four legs, all blues and bouncy moves. We stop at the street where the brick pattern dissolves real sudden and all of the sun glints stronger off the road crumbs and numbers that eat each other open.
Four of clubs falls into the dirt. Trick cards from a concert pianist spin down from my pockets. It had been that kind of night. Italy’s a ways away. I try to time my tread. I got so much goddamned love for you boy I could run in any direction. I got so much goddamned love for you boy I could run in any direction.
My north star, I missed you when it got so bright I could barely see. All that pain you do for me. All that light hurt my eyes. I try. The sky starts to sprinkle. You lay in wait in daylight. Sleeping in again? Every thunderstorm that ever happens holds your low I love yous closer up against my ear.
Daddy lay across the left path, holding his mouth so his teeth don’t fall out, piles of cash stuffed up his pant legs and spilling out of his socks. Always a red-handed left-handed lad. I try. Step up the path a little, say, “Daddy . . .” He can’t talk cause he has to hold his mouth together now. Smashed it on a rock or something. Papa Legba licks up blood and cigarette butts from the grass. Churches no churches. A stone or floor or knuckle sandwich. Churches no churches. I backtrack. Hand him a toothbrush, shake when did it come to this?
I used to go to the church up the road, take the dirt path through the trees then sit on it. Then one day I looked down and all of the fish had died, their big bodies bobbing up like tealeaves in the hot water. I think we were the only ones who ever saw it. A kettle or an ancient flood. A dinosaur walked us up the path one time, real slow like there was nowhere left to go. His shell had all the stories in the world in a pattern like a cobblestone sidewalk.
Longhaired and laughing, the little girl to the right looks over at us, all sudden and serious face. No playtime Papa that girl glares with eyes of green unblinking. Then shrieks fit of giggles she is looking at some secret spot in the sky. We leave her to her fairies n’ glaries. The skin on her face smooth as a perched-on shoulder. White ears weary. She’ll never get older. I time my tread for where it hurt.
Story south, that taste in my mouth. The one I first saw out a dark kitchen window when I was very little. When he nods his head upward it means “come.” When he says “come” you listen. He never averts his eyes. He has the strongest eyes in the world. He touches me all over with them. They sizzle and sing that there is no other way to go, that he is the holder of every road. He shows me how he got it, signals “lean in,” then opens his fist. My throat tightens up. But how can the blood still move then? Papa Legba go fetch a whittled walking stick with a beaklike curve. He sits at our feet, the stick in his mouth, and his eyes bark “take it, take it!”
The grass is wet. Soggy money stuck to Papa’s paws. The little girl is laughing faster, tears tumble with each quick little inhale. The thunder rumbles up out of the ground.
New Dead Families 