Poemz.

Jeffrey Mcdaniel is a wizard.

1975


A boy asks his father to spiral a football over a tree
to arch it, so the ball will arrive an instant before the child.

The child dives. tendons extended, heart bucking
hands opening, to clutch what descends from the sky.

Your mother left today for the institution. If the ball
hits ground, she dies.

That December afternoon the boy's mother passed away,
thirty-three times in the first hour.

Each time he grabbed her head from the snow and
ran it back to his father, promised to do better
and he did, he ran hard, focused, dove.

I caught my mother's skull thirteen times in a row
and she's still not coming home.


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YOUR EYES ARE SO GREEN ONE OF YOUR PARENTS MUST BE PART TRAFFIC LIGHT


-ABSENCE


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The milk will be good until October 7th. That guy nursing the hangover will be good starting tomorrow. The little boy will be good from now until Christmas and then he will be bad again. The little girl, lifting the dollhouse over her head and hurling it to the ground, will not be good no matter what. Charlie says it’s all good as he lights a joint the size of a telescope and charts his inner constellations. Sally was doing good until her period started and her legs began feeling like giant blood sausages. Lynda can’t go to college in this country: her grades are good, but her paperwork is bad. She entered America the bad way—you must somersault across Ellis Island, not pirouette across La Fronterra. Lucifer’s Dollhouse would be a good name for a strip club, but a bad name for a nunnery. Once I saw a priest jab a crucifix into his arm and his head tilt back, as God’s delicious morphine swirled through his veins. Nothing ruins a good time quicker than staring at someone whose eyeballs are like hourglasses filled with rat poison. The opposite of good night is good riddance. The opposite of good-bye is fuck off. Those boys said that girl had good tits, meaning her breasts were very mature and she could go away for the weekend and leave them in charge of her body. Man, that girl looks so good, I want to grab the mosquito, that just bit her, out of the air and swallow it, like a vitamin filled with her blood. The young man asks the woman if he is a good fuck. Yes, you are a good, little fuck, she says.