Hothouse

We ain’t the light but we hold it—lampstands, y’see. Showing Paul 
around, your servant, a shell, camping around the Hill Country like 
a brother, a prophet, y’know? John sent a letter back—he had little 
tacos with minced onions and met an ecoterrorist at the breakfast 
café and a bagel (white, plain), and two scrambled eggs. John 
phoned his mom—I was asleep, asleep on the couch, I listened 
across the kitchen way down the hall through my skull—the 
hollow of bone. And all that. The listening was through an 
asphyxiation of dreams and the call was about Adam who we love 
though only about half of us know him. Not well, but we do. 
Heavy cream a-moldin’ in that there cup and brown sugar blocking 
blood in vein. Five blond children, he says, he says his body’s 
goin’ insane, five sparkling blond kids next table over. Sat for forty 
minutes. Waited for twenty years. Twenty or so. Heavy flesh 
a-moldin’ under a rich cotton-polyester blend and I hear every 
word and know their shapes, too, know them under and on my 
tongue which is moving too but dry, too. Adam doesn’t have long, 
I think, and every night I choke on them, the dreams. Those kids, 
the blond ones, y’know, the family. They’re still there. John thinks 
the food is coming. With the coffee. The food is here. But no meat!