my father buys me a book of poetry.

my father buys me a book of poetry 
& tells me to use it as hymnal
because he doesn't speak the 
life back into a dictionary like
i do-- he says he doesn't understand
my religion but he knows it's the
kind of thing you should read over
the carcass of a dying vehicle--
we remember the blue jeep 
as our shared grandfather--
the hole in the car's frame is dug from 
china & in it crawls all
the ghosts of the toads we didn't manage
to scoop off the road in time--
in it flies the lightning bugs
that burst from my mouth when i was
born-- i came to life in the back
seat of that blue jeep--
my mother was a fist of
dandy lion wishes & my father the
wild august wind rattlesnake-tail
shuttering across the corn--
our jeep is
sinking like the sun slung 
in a soup ladle-- my father taught
goldfish how to swim
in a bowl of chicken noodle
when my fever was high enough
to sit on the roof--
we used the shingles as the squares
of a checkerboard
& my father always let me win--
stacked our kings
taller than the ghost shadows 
of the evergreen trees 
cut off at the ankles--
my father's shadow is permanently
etched in the corner of my bedroom
from the white fingers
of the nightlight--
only my father's shadows has
succeeded in banishing
a demon-- they sleep on my
chest-- eat my hair like
spaghetti to keep it short--
it's to remind me that i have 
been a carcass of a girl
for boys to pull the hair of--
but never to my father--
he still looks at me like
a fist of dandy lions &
rattlesnake tail corn--
i don't need to tell him
i've been raped
for him to know that
my poetry 
is a soup spoon full
of melting goldfish--
queer body-- & our shared
thunder veins that refuse to
vanish after they crackle
the sky-- 
so in the back yard
we each take a hand 
on the rib cage of a rusted
jeep frame--
pull pull pull--
each word never
spoken between us--
my father doesn't speak poetry
but he knows that if he buys
me a poetry book
i'll breath the lightning 
bugs
into a poem & pull
something from a page to sing
over the rust
of the blue jeep--
what color is it beneath
the paint?
we'll pull it off in
chips
to touch finally
it's white bones--
write our names on
the inside of hips--
my father plants
a blue jeep in the 
backyard-- my father
is a fist of dandy lion--
a mouth of fireflies--
holding my poetry
like hymnal.