On Any Given Day

On Any Given Day

On any given day there’s a kid listening to eighteen

and a hundred  things at once and maybe the least

is “Tell me in your own words how you relate

to John Proctor’s reluctance to go to Salem after

he confesses to his wife that he’s seen Abigail alone

on the edge of her accusations."

On any given day the boy in the front row in the heavy

coat and hood drawn low slopes to his note-

book so low so close he thinks he can disappear

in the cipher of right obtuse acute angles so he can

kindle his day on day wish to be anonymous to plot

the day’s equation neat and obvious as x and y demand

On any given day the last diaper in the house is used

covering the rashy ass of a sleepless eight month

and the floor’s cold and the laundry’s dry enough

but spit-up old and no one’s rubbing quarters together

except they got almost enough to get stoned and who

knows or gives a shit when the battle of Gettysburg was

On any given day making it to school is as miraculous

as it gets and at least there’s time between classes

to sneak into the bathroom and throw up the six

corn flakes and on this day it’s mostly spit and thick

sick with a bit of blood and isn’t it Food Science next

block and how many times has the nurse seen me this week?

On any given day she hides her missed period behind her

coat just like he hid her "no!" behind her throat behind

her friend’s parents wet bar and stuffed her anyway so

hard so fast so almost never happening its easy to deny and

that’s what he does and he snapchats her cheap bare ass

and now she knows really knows Hassan in the Kite Runner

On any given day mom won’t wake up when she shakes her

it was the same when she was eight and she was split eye

to nose going down in the bathroom the cool hard cast

iron enamel opening her face the way a zipper opens a pair

of jeans or a coat or a favorite pair of boots to wear to school

On any given day the bulge is made of a High Point 995

and it’s lunch time and by Jesus God those fuckers gonna pay

I’m done listening to their teeth squeeze out “free

faggot ass” in the locker room after gym class I’m done

eating the pizza they shove in my face after they spit

after they blow their nose after they piss on it.

On any given day his leg aches where the amputation

right at the knee and the meds they give and the speed

of the pain caves him and he rolls and crashes and rolls

and crashes the bone it’s gone but it’s not and when it’s all

settled up through to the pelvis maybe he’ll walk again but

yeah so five bucks five bucks I'll sell this pill to you...

On any given day the pocket vibrates and it takes a drone

pilot in Arizona a millisecond to correct the drift but a slow brb

to collide head on and trauma man you don’t know trauma

until you’ve but no that didn’t happen to me that didn’t happen

it couldn’t have you seen the other car the baby seat handle

a hundred feet away, the baby...