a brother drowns the ducklings, one by one, in the backyard pond / a wife drives a man, he stays away / a great grandmother says her hands heal / they get warm on sick babies / a brother pushes a little sister into a ditch / saves her from a tornado /  a girl walks bare chested / an arm gets bit /  a mother is high, passes out in a 7-eleven /  knocks out two teeth / a snake tongue pokes through / a boy’s eyebrows are burned off / shows up as a scar on his future daughter /  there’s no running / water in the double-wide / a wife smashes a Ho-Ho onto an eggshell wall / a  husband looks on, bewildered /  a son holds a gun / prays over a grave / a grandmother is born a year earlier than she thought /  becomes older than her husband / an umbilical cord nooses a baby, makes him little, makes him speak Spanish / a nephew drinks / gets pickled / cancer grows / on a lung, as an eye freckle, on an ovary, everywhere the sun touches  / a child goes hungry /  goes dirty / a home burns / a daughter milks a goat into a tin bucket / shit floats on top / a mother fills a cup / an aunt waits, an uncle leaves a child in Vietnam / the white german shepherd rips up chickens / a niece can’t spell Mississippi /  the river floods anyway / a large rock strays far / from a quarry explosion / crushes a great uncle / walking home / a cousin drowns / in a bathtub /  in heroin / deer come up to a grandfather playing a guitar in a forest clearing / name a spring /  after him / a mother holds her children back, lets a stepfather die on the living room rug / a daughter packs up her barbies and her little sister / walks to the end of the street / gets nowhere