1/30 April ’14
April 1, 2014 at 11:40am
Dane Kuttler

In childhood, the war is never won;
the basement walls are plastered, leaky wounds,
a damp place to rest your June-baked body, leaning
into the concrete, cold as a kind hand on a fever.
Every exit, an escape or a banishment; your fingernails,
grime and gouge.
Your body is an English pea vine,
curling, white,
in the dark of the second grade coatroom.
You live in mutter and howl, on the wrong sideof every clothesline;
you brandish yourselflike a new jacknife,
like you belong to the heat that forged you.
You are arch and bend, always looking at stubble. You are
the top of the stairs, the second chapter, the breath

before the jump.