The Making of Scrappy Enchiladas

Liver cancer is an assassin that gets bored in a few weeks Salty, salty liquid gnaws gashes into everything You with pepper hair, wrinkles in a moon face contorting in convulsions as you smile, You and a lifetime repulsion to milk make me stand at barely five feet But I’d be 4’7’’ and proud Because I have your genes, your feet I’d rather glance at these stubs that can’t quite reach an octave on the ivory and see your fingers An assassin of the liver is by definition heartless Didn’t give you the time to properly tell all your grandchildren good-bye What do you know? She was just a teenager during “a date which will live in infamy” 18 days before Christmas ‘45 Still it was just a day, normal enough for the couple who got married, divorced, had a baby Hopefully not in that order that day Twelve-seven-ninety-five Alive too 10 years ago when the towers flattened like pancakes But my memory clings to times she was Alive to hug baby me and scold little squirt me and teach elementary school me and calm scared puny me But even you couldn’t possibly explain Why the same woman who brought a chocolate birthday cake Who shared so many debates and laughs around the Thanksgiving table A mother, a mother Would shoot her own daughter through the cranium Crosshairs trained on strawberry-flax chestnut hair Oh, I don’t know if it’s better that you were completely unaware Unaware that your brother’s blood had already coagulated Unaware of the gun barrel diameter And bullet velocity and trajectory angle and time of death and the number of whorls and loops they could lift off the weapon that would condemn her before God, if you believe in that sort of thing And what does it all mean anyway? What do differences and differentials, circles and cosecant and the identity matrix matter? Why do we learn about generals’ last stands—Leonidas and Custer wouldn’t care either way And Fannie May’s investments and our million, billion, no 15 trillion dollar Dead you can’t pay for reason I don’t wonder why people would part with their car, house, head to the bar, Pawn away their sixteenth century watch They’re gonna sell their soul to the devil Oh, but he won’t ever get full on scrappy enchiladas So they say buy your records, buy your freedom Save your heartaches, I don’t need them And take my worries if you see them And isn’t this a prison cell With all this hurt but no bell and guard to tell us when to move on? Why shouldn’t we go crazy? I’m surprised we don’t all need to be institutionalized. But my memory clings to times she was Alive to hug baby me and scold little squirt me and teach elementary school me and tell scared puny me That the thunder would go away. And I can eat all the strawberries I want.