Otis' Daughter
Conjured of sorts, god-like fathers, web-streaked
canyons sloping from an elopement of your hand

against a yellow crayon; and that crane cranked
silently to an eerie volume – the taste of blue

on your hands, slap of dirt, young mothers
moving toddlers through colder lines toward

daylight, conversations about hair with
other women; the way someone might stare

at the dark-eyed girl; gliding; Otis' daughter
farther away over crinkly telephone wires,

speaking to more the shuffle of her socks on
the slack carpet then her voice; the vibes

of her father – a jazz juggler homeless on
a downtown street at Christmas time when

I poured coins like too much milk into the
carcasses of your songs. It was nothing more

than a fear of the cold; anomalies grown
old from our warn out peripherals; vanity,

and irregular idolatry; indignation; love less
for the loveless; and those figures, conjured

of sorts from Ian and I in a restaurant breaking
open a piece of overcooked bread ceremoniously

and giggling about it later; men at the heads of
the table, Artemis tiptoeing like any neo-ballerina

over the ribbon of car crashes left in the wake of her
ominous shade sucked inward like the air you

spell out with a thousand calamities of childhood
on construction paper; plastic earrings clinking

against the bottom of the bathtub while you
soak yourself away to a half rotted skeleton in

the greyest of afternoons. I don't remember
your fate – I never sang it, or tasted it, or felt

it deeper than a few additional words tagged on
to a love note once written out in elegant gibberish;

the canyon yarny, farfetched slope, the rope
of hair braided. I said I was someone else, while you

sugarcoated the node of agreement; the sod of
recognition – creatures of habit, on a Sabbath of

vampirism, peach edges, plagues of other themes,
the sky of which being the latest to dazzle me.