a hotter hell fore I got that praying mantis in the jar.  tighten that lid tight said god said father as he took a match to the tick on my neck.  he went inside, I picked up a stick.  stick I threw short the length of heaven as heaven I thought was a road.  the road, at that, our house was on.  get yer brother's dog and call it a night and I did.  and the dog, too, making it in, before anything fell, that stick caught on the bottom frill of some curtain calling down the middle of no show nor audience for it.  

     if it could have been reached, the blackest point in a man, it wasn't.  but the point just before, my mother knew- to turn the bulb, in her white hand, just so.  turned as a globe with a knot in it, knot made of knots from the belly of my brother, nervous fat friend only friend of the outdated world.  he would take with him one night his dog

and shoot himself.   they'd argue what night for a week after.  loaded the gun proper at least and my father would be dead today white hands or no had there been more than one gun she knew about.  I never told, not even the night, how that mantis stayed alive on its tack beating its wings at the frog-throat black like an eyelid against a thumb and my brother I told him he can't sleep through anything but go to sleep anyway with that dog that was my dog long before you were born dumb as a ****** in a mirror.