They laughed the day they broke my humerus
and splinted it with wire coat hangers wrapped
in black tape so my skin couldn’t breathe,
so I’d understand honest pain.
These days we still don’t stop for death.
Instead, we pass by and outside the window
lining the suburban boulevard one tree gleams
in the morning sun—the trunk wound tight in tinsel...
Bag of sugar sized muscle pumps blood. Most reptiles:
3-chambered heart but gator 4-chambers like mammals
& birds which gators used to be millions of years ago
when they were dinosaurs...
We walked along the edges of the pickup bed to avoid the alligators in the center, we were tipping and taunting and finally falling into the bed and scrambling, forgetting there were alligators when we found the sun-rotted tarps . . .
