Like everything delicious, I was warned against it.

Those mornings, I’d slowly descend the stairs

in my plaid Catholic school uniform skirt, find my parents

eating behind newspapers, coned in separate silences.

The only music was the throat-clearing rasp of toast

being scraped with too-little butter, three passes

of the blade, kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, battle hymn of the eighties.

When I pulled the butter close, my mother’s eyes

would twitch to my knife, measuring my measuring--

the goal, she’d shared from Weight Watchers,

a pat so thin the light shines through. If I disobeyed,

indulged, slathered my toast to glistening lace,

I’d earn her favorite admonition, predictable as Sunday’s

dry communion wafer: “A moment on the lips . . .”

I couldn’t stop my head from chiming, forever on the hips.

Hips? They were my other dangerous excess.

I was growing them in secret beneath my skirt,

and when I walked the dog after breakfast

and a truck whooshed past from behind, the trucker’s eyes

sizzling mine in his rear view, I knew my secret

wouldn’t stay a secret long. They were paired, up top,

by a swelling, flesh rising like cream to fill, then overfill

the frothy training bra. Everything softening on the shelf,

milk-made. Meanwhile, at breakfast, sitting on my secret,

I’d concede, scrape kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, lay down

my weapon, dry toast sticking in my craw. I’d think

of the girl from school, seventeen to my fourteen,

who crawled out the window of first-period bio

to meet her boyfriend from the Navy base. She’d collar

his peacoat, draw his mouth to her white neck,

or so I kept imagining. Slut, the girls whispered, watching

her struggling back through the window, throat

pinked from cold and his jaw’s dark stubble,

kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr. Only fourth period,

and already I was hungry for lunch, or something.

Thank you, Republican parents, thank you,

Catholic education, thank you, Reganomics—

words I never knew I’d write. But I hereby acknowledge

repression’s inadvertent gifts. Folks who came of age

in liberal families, permissive cities, the free-love sixties,

how far they must go to transgress—

Vegas, latex, sex tapes, a sugaring of the nostrils?

Yet how close at hand rebellion is for me.

Merely making married love with my married husband,

I’m a filthy whore. Merely sitting down to breakfast

and raising the butter knife, I’m living on the edge.

—2019

You’re seventeen and tunnel-vision drunk,
swerving your father’s Fairlane wagon home

at 3:00 a.m. Two-lane road, all curves
and dips—dark woods, a stream, a patchy acre

of teazle and grass. You don’t see the deer
till they turn their heads—road full of eyeballs,

small moons glowing. You crank the wheel,
stamp both feet on the brake, skid and jolt

into the ditch. Glitter and crunch of broken glass
in your lap, deer hair drifting like dust. Your chin

and shirt are soaked—one eye half-obscured
by the cocked bridge of your nose. The car

still running, its lights angled up at the trees.
You get out. The deer lies on its side.

A doe, spinning itself around
in a frantic circle, front legs scrambling,

back legs paralyzed, dead. Making a sound—
again and again this terrible bleat.

You watch for a while. It tires, lies still.
And here's what you do: pick the deer up

like a bride. Wrestle it into the back of the car—
the seat folded down. Somehow, you steer

the wagon out of the ditch and head home,
night rushing in through the broken window,

headlight dangling, side-mirror gone.
Your nose throbs, something stabs

in your side. The deer breathing behind you,
shallow and fast. A stoplight, you’re almost home

and the deer scrambles to life, its long head
appears like a ghost in the rearview mirror

and bites you, its teeth clamp down on your shoulder
and maybe you scream, you struggle and flail

till the deer, exhausted, lets go and lies down.

2
Your father’s waiting up, watching tv.
He’s had a few drinks and he’s angry.

Christ, he says, when you let yourself in.
It’s Night of the Living Dead. You tell him

some of what happened: the dark road,
the deer you couldn’t avoid. Outside, he circles

the car. Jesus, he says. A long silence.
Son of a bitch, looking in. He opens the tailgate,

drags the quivering deer out by a leg.
What can you tell him—you weren’t thinking,

you’d injured your head? You wanted to fix
what you’d broken—restore the beautiful body,

color of wet straw, color of oak leaves in winter?
The deer shudders and bleats in the driveway.

Your father walks to the toolshed,
comes back lugging a concrete block.

Some things stay with you. Dumping the body
deep in the woods, like a gangster. The dent

in your nose. All your life, the trail of ruin you leave.

The first time I found my brother 
overdosed, he looked holy. A thing
not to be touched. Yellow halo of last 
night’s dinner. His skin, blanched blue
fresco: Patron Saint of Smack. A cop,
flustered, tugged up his shorts, plunged
a needle into a pale thigh. He hissed 
awake like a soda can. The paramedic 
spoke softly in his ear like a lover, 
asked him what color yellow and red 
make. What is the difference between 
a lake and a river? In the corner
I whittle that used syringe into
an instrument only I can play.