Darks rings carve a Fire
Island log.
Light footsteps patch
the trails of mud.
Each oldest tree
a woods’ heirloom, like a gold
ring or trauma passed down.
My father’s father
would punish him with kneeling
on small beds of raw white rice, his dead
load spread on knives
of grain for minutes.
Inside each minute a gate
to a minute, and another
and another,
till each contains ten
or thirty of itself.
And when his father lets him
it takes time to stand back up,
knees numb, all white
and gnashed and red, left sectioned
and thorned like pineapple flesh.
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