Blood gargoyles from a flattened nose.
Red spiders crawl on February snow
as my father fistfights in plumes of steam
and silent children watch through rings of window ice.

He worked the midnight shift
repairing broken iron buckets
that hoisted the coal that crushed
his brother’s leg to a galled emptiness

only whiskey could remedy.
Unfathomable, the oily engine hangs
as he ratchets out another bolt,
wonders what will become of me,

holding a trembling trouble light.
He hunted rabbits, transfixed the carcasses
on sixteen penny nails, peeled
off pelts like fresh husks of corn,

the inside-out skin slippery,
the sound of zippers,
guts tumbling almost gracefully
to the ground.

He rocked me in the claw-armed chair
that had belonged to his grandmother,
sang miles off-key a country song
about doggies and a new home in Wyoming.

I felt secure in those brown arms
as the steel chirp of a passing train
kept time to “I’ll Sail My Ship Alone,”
and my father nodded, boosted the volume,

didn’t give a damn about any melody,
and neither did I,
wrapped in a warm afghan,
the blue collar bell canto I can’t forget.