and if the poem is not a place
and if the word is nothing more than
a smaller form of violence
then here we are
 
a woman choked to death by her lover
and left on the kitchen floor
 
a film about jesus christ
 
the spikes driven through his flesh
and the meth labs all shut down
in the town i grew up in
and this man with shaking hands
at my door
 
yellow teeth and yellow eyes and
he says he knew my father
 
says he knows that
everything i’ve ever written is a lie
but that he knows how to keep quiet
 
says twenty bucks
 
looks over my shoulder
at my wife
 
becomes nothing more than the
sound of rain at three in the
                             morning