Game Day 

Grown up now, I know
about anger, its tidal surge 
and shameful ebb. Frightened

then, I watched wary from
the stairs, orange couches 
and plaid curtains swallowed

by the tv’s convex 
mouth: your long legs stretching,  
resting on the table,

the announcer’s pleasant 
hum: a catch, a fumble,
and the popcorn bowl sent 

skidding, the last waxy 
kernels singing. Your rage, 
bigger even than

you were, then.
I, still small, understood 
already it wasn’t just a game. 

Heart Flower 

One after another I collected them
each spring, planted them in the bed 
my father dug in the shady spot by the porch.

At the nursery, when he let me pick,
I chose this silly, unbeautiful 
bush, year after year. 

I loved and I think I also hated 
these ugly orphans, raw parts exposed to the world obscene
insides turned out. Freak of nature: 

uncanny bloom embodying, 
so literally, a bleeding heart—a puffy organ, petal-moist 
and sinewy like human tissue. 

A single gory teardrop 
dangling from the tip like an end that won’t come. 
Zip, zip, zip

I’d think as I walked through 
the garden. Sometimes,
when my father was away, I’d run 

my pinched fingers along the stem, 
stripping those valentines, 
crushing them in my small hand, leaving the bush bare.