Poem Without a Bird in It

i.

In an aisle of a grocery store, I saw a mother yank her kid by the arm, so hard that he began to cry. I can’t remember what happened next.

ii.

It seems like watching over my own shoulder from a point about ten feet off of the ground, as though I were a shaft of light in a painting with little perspective, the characters virtually flattened—and I fail to illuminate the scene.

iii.

Aged twelve or thirteen, in the public library, I could locate just a single book on the subject and read pages that looked relevant. As I recall, the author thought that some mothers recognize their infants as people they dislike. I found this unhelpful. The surface of the desk was yellow.

iv.

Two of the photographs on my shelves feature me with family. My mouth open, I’m not there. I have trouble with images of my friends, avoid their retrospectives. Social media unnerves me. For years, I believed that I hated the modern.

v.

For years, I woke up in the dark, with urine stinging my inner thighs. I would walk quietly into my parents’ room and approach the big bed, always on my father’s side, and try to rouse him without my mother’s pale nightgown stirring.

vi.

As a child, I got the shit knocked out of me. Of this unconcealed fact, I am the evidence.

vii.

These days, I stand at the edges of dense forests and listen, and focus my eyesight through optics. I feel that something will emerge, and thereupon that the world will continue in knowable detail.