By TIMOTHY LIU
Her hands kept on
working their way
into my pants even
after the wedding
toast—the evening
merely an excuse
for a gift horse
crashing through
the stables of a barn
a midget had set
on fire, my mother
clothed in nothing
but safety matches
struck on her teeth
as she colored in
my moon with pieces
of broken chalk—
Timothy Liu’s most recent book of poems is Don’t Go Back to Sleep. He met his husband-to-be while sprawled out drunk on Dickinson’s grave more than two decades back. And that has made all the difference.
