cook out

let's put our fingers on the sun.
i want a hot dog life. my siblings are 
driving cars off cliffs. i am at the bottom
with a butterfly net. come on everyone,
let's be alive just a little longer.
i will eat what i must. for the first time
since high school, i have been craving meat.
i think if it weren't for the vegetarian thing
i might have pastrami. my grandmother
is a lion at the zoo. she devours the carcass
of an elk. we sneak her in hot dogs
so she can have some joy. at the nursing home
where she died there was a family room
full of incomplete puzzles. most of them
were missing a piece. i imagined 
we could fall through those holes if we needed to.
summer is ending & we haven't had a cook out
in years. when i was small we stood in the grill
& compared char lines. we always at my 
younger sibling first. then me. then my mother.
my father, nothing like zeus, licked his fingers.
used too much ketchup. i want to come 
together for real. i want to sit beneath
a folding moon. plastic lawn chairs. bare feet. 
one year we were obsessed with water. 
i put my thumb over the mouth
of a hose. rainbow birth. hot dog light.
lately i am the weaver without a loom. i am 
the bug house searching for the cricket. 
in the night, my sibling sends me
pictures of hot dogs. some from a string. 
some from the other side. ghost hot dogs.
i "heart" them all. i never know what else to say. 
the grill rusts. becomes a home for isopods. 
my grandmother's grave is a hole in a puzzle
trying to depict a beautiful beach. i always try
to look for what is missing & turn it into a portal. 
the hot dogs elude me. i each a peach as if it were a heart.