TODD DILLARD


Mother’s Day

Mouth smutted by childhood's first Fuck
you, mouth running like midnight trains

with shovel-tongue and coal-teeth, and
mouth learning goddamn is the missing

puzzle piece to living - goddamn pen
goddamn card goddamn Dillard's

department store and Fuck you very
much for no family-name discounts.

Salt sting of liquid soap scrub, rabid
game of foam-and-holler, Mother's

clockwork dirty-purge by dunking
my head under the faucet and goddamn

   -DUNK-

the train says whatever it wants
in it's AM catcalls and goddamn

   -DUNK-

gimme a fucking quarter before that tooth
hitchhikes down the drain and goddamn

    -DUNK-

mother and your happy-day happy-day
lessons in submersion. You taught me everything

I know about drowning, and all I got you
was this wet, goddamn card.



Carwreck Lullabies

Sing to me with breath of broken glass
in cocktail dress of scabs,

shaky vertebrae. Plug in the nightlight
of jarred bruises, their grape glow

wounded moonlight. I eat ashes, ashes,
hum ambulance hymns by heart

on crack-less walks to school, pray
it isn't you again. Let all fall down

be the flowers melting on your grave,
let your casket be a Ford truck, brake-light red.

On your brick tombstone I will carve
the end of your lullaby: give the dogs

your bones, crush your window body

into hourglass dust, breathe, lung-hungry.



Oh My Kidnapped Hangover

The car in my chest pulls parachutes
of dust, Last Night gagged and handcuffed

in the trunk. The blister-
kissed cigarette-burn on my forearm

whispers dying rock-a-byes, and all this body needs
is a mile of desert and vulture congregations

to get rid of itself. It's not enough to worship

just by being alive. I need a gas station social,
a one-toothed Mac with a compass-finger pointing

to the next scene in this horror
flick. Give me cocaine

baptisms and cactus disciples, scripture
etched on fingertips praising: I will be over soon I said
I will be over soon. Redo today

into something other than the sun's broken bone
puncturing horizon skin. The kick-thump,

kick-thump from the trunk is
this body's favorite lie, and yea though I fly

through the windshield again and again
tomorrow always rises

over soon I said I will