“They killed the Kennedys,” he said, and every dragon that ever lived in the sea
broke water,
and the gas station attendant got nervous, and then I got nervous,
seven years old in the back of a red Lincoln Mercury, and my father,
heedless of dragons who were heedless of him, continued,
“they killed Jack and now they killed Bobby,” and the gas station attendant
suddenly had other things to attend to, but I was seven and couldn’t get out
of the goddamned red Lincoln Mercury, and the red dragons let the attendant go,
but their eyes followed me like I wasn’t just some Portuguese sailor with a mind for
spices, bent on China,
and the goddamned red Lincoln Mercury just another boat on the mythic waters,
the puffed cheeks of the angels blowing it and seven year old sailors
involuntarily bound and bound, two bounds, like two dead Kennedys,
and the dragons started grinning but kept their mouths closed, as they always do
for seven year old sailors and IBM worker nobodies like my daddy,
who know the dragons have teeth but never see them, if they’re lucky, or dumb,
or not loud enough, or easily taken for granted, or too little-human, stomach hungry
and China bound,
but the angels just kept blowing from the four corners, pushing the goddamned red
Lincoln Mercury,
and my beautiful mother who voted for Nixon and then Goldwater and then Nixon
again
told my father to hush, and I prayed with my mother please father hush,
this is only Virginia and we’re going to California, in the goddamn red Lincoln
Mercury,
and the dragons may hear you, and you may become unlucky, or undumb, or loud
enough,
not to be taken for granted, no longer little-human and stomach hungry,
and the cheek winds of the four blowing angels may bump the red Lincoln Mercury
to China,
where the dragons bare their teeth, for every one, even nobody sailors,
who wake up forty-nine in 2011 in the nightmare sweat of their fathers.
