everybody ends different

we all get a taste to begin with
but who makes it to the end
has done
because of what’s been done
thanks to grandma’s swollen clitoris.
granddaddy was no great heart breaker,
as the stories allude,
but knew where on grandma’s vellum cheek to place his hard hand

had grandma not got cocky
on mason jar shine,
tablespoon at a time,
for she had what aunt Gladys diagnosed

 strange iteration of addiction,
clothed in small doses

would have saved my daddy’s ass,
on that dreamy Indiana post-Christmas blow out,
from the boys in the Plymouth, laid off from AC Delco,
the only game in town.

slowed to idle reverse lights up
he squirt a piss blossom on the crotch of his brand new blue dickies,
temple pulsed
hummingbird edging
in unison with a softly exhaled ‘fuck’

the boys in that Plymouth,
red lined at night.
knuckles and toes on foreign bones.
mom not saying a goddam thing,
when that sonofabitch moved in,
he had a bottle but no cups
he put on records, a different side he said.
they got drunk,
sonofabitch asked him if he ever

 tire iron boy held head high
out the window as the Plymouth
reversed in my old man’s direction
That's what made my daddy run.
I give thanks
to egregious american consumption
for providing causality and figurative language
to explain my eventual conception.