Wound Boy Poem

that day he smelled like dead bird all afternoon,

living sin, reds and purples staining the open bleeding nest

as if unmixed, straight from the tube.

Insert chipped blade of jack-knife here. Insert feel of the flesh— how he cuts

even himself.
Wound boy. Boy pharaoh. Cloud-bank

like a femur, chariot-crushed. The hurts—from everyone, from no one— so many

they were driveway stones embedded in the lung.
His breath:

a sobbing flute noise.
Teary sips of vengeance.

Amulet: Zippo lighter, wrist- rocket, club.

Amulet: fire.
Silence like a hanging garden in a field of junk.

If a hobo, then a train.
If a train, then grand pitted wheel of moon,

whip of stars.
Punctured twilight.

The wind in his hands becoming a horse in the trees.