Pink morning rooster crows

bacon fat frying love in the kitchen

soft chenille slips my toes &

Grandma hears my pitterpat &

pulls me up into her lap wraps goose

flesh in soft word blankets

“Well, now. Look who’s up with the rooster!”

My grandpa leans and spits outside,

Captain Hook, one eye on me,

he straps the sharp prosthetic on

the bony pink & fleshy nub

The screen door squeaks and slams

on speckled brown & red

linoleum scrubbed clean, free

of Texas dirt

and freckled cows that chew

and hoof bluebonnets, Indian

Paintbrushes, girlish lashes

shading, beating back Old Man

Sun’s heavy heat that cracks

and dries and kills soft things

in red Texas dirt

like tiny red fire

ants and children

lugging weighty things

like smelly dogs, sad

eye blue and hopeful eye

brown like mine & mud &

thirsty Texas

dirt

The ants & hook & metal

shed mouth bite,

leave hot marks

on pink skin. Turn,

away to cool porcelain

sink embrace where once she washed

hot pain & bitten fat pink

baby legs

& every day a balded

chicken’s pink down

thirsty drain mouth

drinking, spitting life

at cracked dry dead

red Texas Dirt