Hanging Bed Sheets

That man you’re fighting with, 

He called tonight

While you’re tugging shoestrings 

off the skinny clotheslines of a trailer park childhood 

and peculiarity bloats the ombligo of sky,

beneath the cackle of splintery electric poles and

tweaked-out Clowns swapping bumps, beneath stars

that droop like bolts of sweat, 

you’re pinching salt near eyelids and

sponging boot prints off your cheek, and 

haphazardly, the man inside me is wiping 

scuff marks from floorboards 

where the dancing occurred.  

In thunderstorms and nightmares, 

My abuelo used to strip our beds and 

hang the bed sheets, stained and

fending off impotency, over all the mirrors of the house.

Other nights, he’d clamber up the roof and piss a

golden pain as we’d all switch off turns attempting 

to coax him back to bed.  And that’s how I learned

to hang bed sheets in front of mirrors.  

That man you’re fighting with,

He called tonight.