When Conner Tells Me He Looks Like a Bag of Smashed Assholes 

I tell him he’s more like the freshly shaven gooch 
of Bill Murray’s Ghostbuster licked raw by 
Aphrodite who’s holding the end of another 
burning cigarette and lounging in the lip 
of her clam shell shelter divined by the Gods 
on a starlit beach thirty minutes away from 
Wewahitchka and Parker, Panama city, 
chasing whole packs through midnight as she watches
yet another man hike up his britches, waller back 
to his twenty-nineteen GranTurismo, get in 
the car and drive home. I say he’s akin to a heap 
of Oscar Meyer’s thick cut bacon, pooling grease 
on a plate of Hungry Jack pancakes, so thick 
not even Dawn dish soap does the trick of cutting 
stains like the kitchen ninja it claims to be, it’s cut- 
throat quips and corporatized death grips no match for
the mess made on the ceramic like a bum fuck 
muck bog choking out all those ads in a way 
that makes me kinda laugh. And I’m being funny 
when I say this but he really is the space between 
the inside of the left cheek and the cavity 
colored teeth of a yogi stuffing 
his mouth with Stay Puft marshmallows while trying to say
chubby bunny until he chokes and unwinds 
his body from the position he’s been holding 
since dawn, but Goddammit if he doesn’t have 
a sense of humor about the whole thing, tilts 
his head back and laughs the rest of the day away 
and retires to his home where he organizes 
his collection of Troll Dolls on the shelf above 
his bed before he lays down and sleeps. Conner 
Logan is a plastic bag heart murmur galloping 
to the end of an Adderall high he had no 
intention to desist. He’s as crazy as Guy 
No Horse from that Diaz poem I wrote a whole 
essay about because I’m such a little thief 
when it comes to stealing other people’s ideas, 
I think it’s starting to drive my coworker, Jacob, 
crazy, who also reminds me of my little
brother in the way that he runs head first into 
problems, lights up a room and burns it down. When my
little brother tells me he looks like a bag of 
smashed assholes, I say he’s exactly that: winds 
commissioned by a basement burglar, a barking 
spider’s natural call, the buffalo that bays 
in moonlight. But more than anything he’s the right
wing preacher to my grandmother’s Time Warner heart,
he’s the prima donna opera singer to the 
Rodger and Hammerstein musical put on by 
my mother, he’s my father’s brother’s cousin’s 
sister’s former-uncle-twice-removed’s second room-
mate remodeling the love seat in the attic 
of his aging wife’s fourth summer bungalow in 
Bermuda with a hint of Frank Lloyd Wright. 
He’s the wind in the sails of some girl he’s gone off
with who doesn’t know he’s in the military, yet, 
but I’ve already got an invite to the wedding, he’s the yoked yeoman
pool boy servicing every wine mom’s winter garden.
When Conner tells me he looks like a bag 
of smashed asshole, I say, no son, 
you’re the whole goddamn warehouse full.