Malibu Sunrise

The strands of spider silk that connect us

across great distances in this random flyspecked life
are suddenly drawn tight, like laces corseting the tongue

of a hightop pair of Chuck Taylors,
as he slips onto the bar stool beside me
at the fire hall, orders two highballs, one for himself

and the other for his latest lady friend, 
waiting blankly back at the table for her man. 
I haven’t seen him in years, 

and considering everything he’s been through,

I shouldn’t be shocked at how he’s aged,
and yet I am: eyes popping from deep sockets,

grin gone snaggletoothed and gray.
“I guess you heard,” he slurs, and I nod and ask,
“How are you doing? Are you okay?”
“I’m doing great,” he spits, pickled in sarcasm.

“How would you be doing, you hear some asshole’s 
been going around saying he put his prick
in your daughter’s mouth?” He leans in closer, 
breathing Johnny Walker, breathing kerosene, and mutters, 
“I sit in the car, in front of the house, waiting 
for the motherfucker, and when he steps out 
then all I say is, are you Jesse? And dude says yeah, so then...”
He cracks his knuckles into his palm, again and again.
His forearm is decorated with script, the word Princess:

the name of his daughter, who just turned eighteen.

By some coincidence, it's also the name 
of his old lady, herself just twenty-one,
and still waiting back at the table for that orange juice and rum.
She recently honored him with him another son.
He delivered the child himself, pulled over

by the side of the road on the way to the hospital
a month after making parole.
Another in an seemingly endless series 
of exhausting miracles. 

“The system’s rigged,” he declares, 
savagely tearing at his cuticles
and hocking a great wad of phlegm at the linoleum. 
“Fucking assholes. I got three years probation, 
anger management classes up the butt.

I know I fucked up. No question. I mean, I got caught. 
But look. In my shoes 
you would have done the same thing. 
You know it’s true. I guarantee.” 
A braid of November cobwebs dangles from a vent 
in the ceiling, twisting along with the crepe paper streamers.

My mother trills that it’s time to light the candles. 
It’s a surprise birthday party for my stepfather, 
though later, out of the earshot of his old lady,
he’ll assure me that he was only pretending 
to be surprised, that he knew the whole time, 
and also that if it been his daughter, this Jesse guy 
would no longer be in possession of a full set of genitals. 

But right now, his son, having become hypnotized
by the television broadcasting the game, 
suddenly remembers his mission 
and swivels and staggers away from the bar, 
each fist clutching a cocktail the color of flame, 
as everyone in the hall begins to sing. 
And, downing the last of my drink, I join right in.