in a dream i kiss my father’s dead mouth

in a dream i kiss my father’s dead mouth

Karson

and meet the cold lips
of a boy crying
in the endless maw
of an irish winter
council house doors
frozen shut
windows playing movies
of his mother smoking
her lungs sticky
with her son’s name
ashes falling from her fingers
his father’s name
burning his shoulders like snow
filling up the glass
until he can’t see her anymore
the ice-covered doorstep is no bed
for a child but he will sleep there
waiting for morning to cocoon
its dry breath around him
and birth him
into another
starving christmas
year after year until finally
i am born
and immediately i begin
the dutiful work
of dying
and so he nails
his skin to my bones
in hopes it might melt
with me
in the warm embrace
of my incubator coffin
which instead
becomes a boat
setting sail
into
the floods

Karson

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