Ham

I am blacked out in the bathroom
of my childhood home,
during a party

I never call or visit
so it is special
I am even there at all

We smoked a pig
all night with cherry wood
and so the whole place
smelled like campfire
and Ohio

I made my rounds all day
and helped pull meat
off the bone

Until the only thing left
was some burnt skin
and a skull

I never count
when I am
fishing through
the coolers
for another drink
I cannot toast
the sky with

All the people who left early
I insist I do not like
are probably right
about where I
at least am going.

After a while I am gone
too long and my whole
family starts to search

Until they find me
behind a locked door
with the lights off

When I don’t answer
they get nervous
and my father and my uncle

start breaking the door down
while my wife gets only angrier

My pregnant sister in law
tells her if it were my brother in
my place she’d kill him
instantly the second
she could see him

When they manage to get the door off
I am sitting there asleep
with piss all over me

unable to respond

when I wake up I’m somehow
back in Indiana