My father was a motley of sound, a funk band

with bottomless drums and songs that knew nothing

of fatigue. My father had teeth like piano keys, a trumpet

in his spine. He coughed like an old record player

and it sounded like music, but what do I know?

I'm just two turntables and a mic. A sample of a man

I can hardly recognize, a photocopy of an instrument

my fingers never learned how to play and all I know is that

there is an epic sleeping underneath my tongue and I have

a story worth telling do here I am, poring the containers

that I keep behind my eyed with plans to baptize you

in all the things I've seen. Hoping these words will be the

fire hydrant on your street corner and you will run

through my stories like sprinklers on days when God

plugs in the sun and decides to crank the volume all the way up.