Verboten

The godless lick of the electric fence
to which you offered your left hand.
Your winded bloodred shirt,
oxygenated like the tissue of the poppies
I’m not supposed to talk about.
The one in which you were my brother;
in which you scavenged crabshells from the trash;
in which I met the dreamgirls
with their long blonde hair
and saw they had inherited your scars.
 
The line cut out and cut again.
The train had left,
I heard its futile three-note human song.
It set you off, you were that live.