We wanted a week to ourselves. We had grown
up without a father
in our father’s shed,
and with three times
more mother
than we needed.
We taught ourselves Basque and planned to
sail for
We felt so European.
We didn’t believe in anything
and were willing to
die for it. We felt so American.
We believed in whatever it was
we could force the
rest of the world to believe
in the next fifteen
minutes or fuck ’em. We swore a poll of secrecy.
Death chose death by sea, and no drowning
allowed.
AFTERWARDS
We wanted a week to ourselves. We packed up
and left.
We drove into the ocean.
We lived in several countries at once, in a
shack on the border.
Each country was an island, miles from the
others.
We lived with a lawn tractor and a number
of rakes.
Each rake belonged to a different country,
but the tractor
belonged to a Swiss gardener named Jesus,
who had fled to the
shack as a child.
Jesus was my mother and made us both from
clay.
We could not swim because you were an
orphan.