my father catches a live alligator

& says stab this knife into her spine & I say do alligators have spines then Google it. I return to the yard & my father is inside the alligator's stomach. How terrible: being swallowed before you are ready to be swallowed. Hello Father inside the body that does not belong to you. There are too many teeth inside that mouth. There are too many bodies inside those teeth. I use a torch to return you to the light. You are naked. The alligator is dead now or the alligator is pretending to be dead now or I am pretending that my eyes have stopped working.

ohio

Ohio is a dead cactus          nobody
says          We are graveyards
& chain-link fences          We are box
wine until          we are too empty
to be box wine          Hold me like
alleyways          Let there be snow
& failure          & jars of flies          Let's
put this in perspective          There are
62,000 miles of blood vessels
in the human body          laid end to end
they would circle our hands          2.5 times