DRECK

FRANKIE ENGDALL

HOW IF

Brother drinks out of the wrong
hoof-shaped puddle and turns to goat.

My life is a series of Thursdays.

I can’t stand it
when he leaves the puzzle unfinished.
It makes the kitchen table unusable.

We yell at each other over
the refrigerator and realize we were yelling
when the refrigerator sputters wetly and stops.

As revenge I fill the living room
with leaves and lie there with the tv remote
till he finds me.

I am drunk. I drank from that hoof-shaped puddle.
I tell stories about myself with my pinky out.
They are all vowels.

Brother ripped out the wrong lily and now
he’s a lily in a whole field of lilies.

As therapy, I carve vegetables
into the shapes of animals.

I need to find a horizon.

Brother thinks about paperclip factories.
Lonely machine dry thunder
rumbling long after human extinction.

He hopes this is not his last thought.
He picks wrong lily.
It is.

I’m hungover. Says sister.
Hung over what? Says brother.

I grew a falcon head. I can’t stop
eating my breasts. Now they look like
the insides of figs.

My breath smells like mice.

Brother says he wishes he was a guy
from China. Surrounded by other guys
from China. Around a pot of boiling soup.

Go out and pick some lilies
for the table. Says sister. Carving
a zucchini monkey.

Falcon grows a human head. It keeps eating all
her mice and making self-conscious coughs.

My favorite white shirt got stained.
Patch of brighter white in a sea of white.

Would I be able to tell if
a whale started singing
backwards? Says brother.
Racing a tiny car down
the line where his sisters
hair parts.

A vase of lilies always
cheers up the place. Says sister. But not
when they’re ugly or dying.

A goat turns human after drinking
from a ceramic bowl in a pile of rubble.

Now goat hates his coworkers.
Why is it 2 o’clock? Why is it always
2 o’clock? Says he.

Just think of a happy color. Says she.
Bitch. Thinks he.

The tv remote is tucked under my shirt.
I am still curled under the leaves.
I don’t think he’ll ever find me.

It has been years. Decades. Eons. Even
the horizon is gone. I tried to be rib again but
I turned to grass.

After many extinctions, I almost forgot
I had a brother, until his familiar stubbly lip
nibbles my pinky. Small twig.

He grabs the remote
and turns everything on.

Now get up and make
a world.

The night has taken my shape.

I want it back.

Frankie EngdalL