Dreams again wring strange language from my incoming husband’s guts
& the large nose I love grows where his dead father now shoves in
somethin unpronounceable. On the bed at his feet
the floor scratches sleep from me. Junior moans the minor weeping
he blames on tired bones, though every fight this night occurs.
All houses in the holler pipe a toxic exhaust like ours.
Every night he cannot fight. The same wars we believe
we leave out the door are lusted for in tv scenes the demon senior
asskicks across my love his son’s dirty purple intimations.
A white ache stakes its occupation of this mountain. We say
it’s weather. Scolding cold light I suck from the rusty well &
practice mumbling “Nantahala” into a knuckle-length of cigarette.
Possession accelerates in the forehead of my future namesake. I figure
it’s a family matter. On this his family’s land, gettin fucked by the dead’s
an heirloom I imagine. Airborne lying fog filters calls vicious dogs
full-throat downhill to phosphor & suspicions they’d throttle if only
unchained. Figments of internet signal glitch when the furnace
burns some invisible & potentially fatal element else. Its heat
keeps my future husband’s dead father’s ex-wife more alive
among stacks of sentiment her memories hellbend out of
by the hours. Foxfire folk. I wanna be at home here, lord knows
how come, knotting flashbacks of how the obliterations happened,
nuts for spit & hiss for new uphill neighbors, pissed off
at gravel their fedex deliveries scatter, priming earfuls of trivial
bitching & common assault, door-stopping airsoft to pelt mutts,
& peddling glitter-coated mistletoe to traveling Asheville idiots.
When the him in him gets in, Christmas’ll crack right down the middle.