My daughter molds a gun from bread.
Why do gods make us eat? Witness divine

stovetop resurrection of yesterday’s sides!
I scrape my plate. August, so long, sweat

your bullets of stars over our shrinking soirée: 
alluvial fluted trunks, swamp iris, lone owl

in the live oak, dropped brass of avenue magnolias, 
this shotgun’s gable rookery, these leftovers.

Her flimsy Sunbeam pistol to my head:
I am not and do not like you, Mother.

Don’t play with your food, Pistol. Copper skitters
on the fire. Something’s done, something unfed. 

I’ll have my drink. What’s got my get may get me too.
Play dead, each day a shallow sucking wound.