Veronica Fletcher

Drill

I do not want to look backwards, past the bricklaying men
plastered to the alleyways, sons-of-bitches telling me
it’s good, actually, to remember this world  

at the house party someone takes me into a narrow
hall beside the kitchen, says I can be your next tattoo
and I have decided to gut him next                                                   

down at the dive, Pauline sets up cameras to catch
whatever the rabble are doing wrong, watching from                       
a small hospice bed like she’s still got it in her, too                          

to kill the girls who pay for mission trips, to call
home without a screen, to find something worth                              
remembering, even when it hurts, especially when                          

the green rocket of pain says it’s done now, all the men
have gone—their houses vacant lots, and even those ripped             
couches burn the good smoke                                                                                                                                   

I labor six days beneath the poplar and kudzu, blue mountain
a sleeping silhouette—men say this sunset is beautiful
but they haven’t seen my homeland, know nothing of 

Clair Mel, the trailer where Dee and I would sit with
our ashtrays after work, watching brushstroke clouds
swirl, glass pipes catching sun rays like hands 

and these, my fingers, dipping down the bottle neck
to draw out the fever—slowly, ‘cause that’s how it should
be done, but also clean, orderly and bedded on virgin sheets 

near Birmingham, my distant cousin farms sunflower and milkweed
and when the fever comes, he pulls a mercurial thermometer from
the black hole of history—puts it in my mouth like the Aramaic word of God 

my God, who was named of rage—for the tell-tale genuflection
of your fat cheek against the dirt, of your pallor when finally struck
by white-hot iron tongs, fishing out the falsified dream 

I try and recall holding working men by their feet to the fire
call it powerwashing when they wiggle and cry
because there are meals that are bloodless, and meals meant for greed  

but I remember the meat best, always, for its worldliness
for how far the sear will spread, salt-cured and coiled deep
I take my power tools out for dinner—
I allow them the first bony bite 

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Veronica Fletcher is a poet and writer from South Florida. She is an MFA candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she also works as a reader for GRIST.