Marry that man mama says so I say soon as he gets outta prison mama, then mama goes and pulls out the two words from her vo- cab she knows I find offensive: hypermasculine and topiary and she uses both to describe my man’s family tree which now on account of all their deaths we might as well just call them inept kindling but I thank God and baby Jesus that Broadside didn’t get life, just 20, and I know mama cares bout him almost as much as she loves daddy who died right before he could marry her and mama is now standing outside on our freshly painted porch which isn’t at all dry and her back is to me so I can’t see how lonely her front side is and she’s lookin kinda dead and alone-like like a boarded up pawnshop even with this chokehold-blue sky as backdrop or maybe the loneliness isn’t loneliness but more like the feeling of the empty meth bag in your palm and its big black hole of nothingness but mama never smoked no meth so maybe she’s feelin the world’s sorrow if sorrow were the size and sound of an abandoned prosthesis limb factory.