Pick Your Switch

says my father           and I’m stepping

out into the backyard forest           the sycamores

are not a spilled latticework           of bent elbows not

the bony helter-skelter           cage of likely beaten

boys they are just           fucking

trees.           I root

through God’s           mottling

underbelly His surfacing          grasshopper lesions

root out a stick           who will come alive for me