→ Windhover
Raleigh, NC 
2025




After Allen Ginsburg’s Howl



For A.G., K.J, R.L. 

I. 
I did not see my generation’s brightest minds destroyed 
by madness, not starving, sometimes hysterical, but 
often naked in the way that I can look at myself in the raw 
mirror, sometimes clothed, always in the eye, always 
pieces of our mothers poking out, always the fingertips 
of our father’s minds (even if he was touchless). How do we 
leave those bits behind? Is there a place to store brothers 
and sisters other than in the deep folds of the mind? Deep folds 
of the palm? Deep cracks in the nail? Deep holes 
in the yard; the dog dug them, all wild fur and ears with 
roots flying behind him, left there without a second thought, 
just like your sister did for school when she warned 
you to seek out a therapist the second your heel clears 
the threshold of the new old house, she hopes that you do
every night before you close your eyes to fall asleep because 
the things our parents gave us cannot be outrun in our sleep
but only in dreams, maybe nightmares, maybe in sloping 
backyards that end in creeks that flow to lakes and to tire swings 
that nobody will particularly mind if you sit on for a while, 
flinging feet in and out of that long river (so long as you 
dry your feet before going back into that old house) so long 
as you kiss your mother hello so long as you call your sister 
on Tuesdays at 4:03 pm to let her know just how it’s going 
and hope that you don’t have to hear her wailing down the hall 
from your bunk bed any more or ever again on the other end of the phone 
but she calls from somewhere else is home now, so it’s up to you to climb 
the ladder down and find your way to the bathroom where 
there will probably be a soft yellow light. 

II. 
Who lives in the rolling trolley beneath my old bed? Who cracks 
its knuckles in the darkness between supper and breakfast? Who 
is supposed to help me? Who was supposed to help my father? And 
his father? And his? The ugly black maw of unforgiveness is only 
ever feet away from our children, but who are you to fight it? What 
tools has your mother left you? Her mother left you? Her mother left 
you? How can it be up to me to stop her? To save her? Can I? Can I? Can I?


III. 
Kimberly! Robert! I’m with you on Brookton 
     where my hands first saw light 
I’m with you on Ashgrove 
     where our feet bored pits into the shaggy carpet that we felt new but instead of seeing softness for what it was I 
      found shittiness in old porcelain 
I’m with you on Lancelot 
     where there is an unacknowledged rage that somehow keeps us each warm in its way 
I’m with you on Huntington 
     where a sorrow still sits, on its own, but attended to with gentleness 
I’m with you in Elmwood 
     where your father’s father’s bones are settled in a box that one day we all might know once we lay down our fat bags 
      of agony to beat on into the current of the ceaseless to come 

                                                                       North Carolina, —