one time, when you were six years old,
your parents took you to the alligator farm,
which is exactly three.02 miles away from the beach, and
your father, with his beefy hands, lifted you up in his arms,
let you peer over the safety railing at the scaly green creatures
below you, and sometimes now you wish he would have
dropped you down. maybe you would have died. or maybe
you wouldn't have, but at least then you would’ve had
a survival story to tell.

perhaps the problem with
starting poems off with a trip to the alligator farm is that readers
expect you to get chopped into sixteen pieces by means of
teeth larger than hands, break your neck, but
there’s no conclusion to this story other than that sometimes
you wash your hands until your knuckles are bleeding,
and that’s by far worse than being swallowed by a reptile,
clawing out your own vocal chords,
dying,