At night, he dreams the props buckle again;
mules keen, the earth murmurs, gives, and enfolds,
crushes his brother like an olive pit,
and he must dig free, limp out from the mouth
of the mine, find light, blow ash from his hands,
move west, apprentice for a cementer
in the city, listen to jazz, guzzle wine,
make love to a dozen senoritas, shed
each like a sweater that scratches too much.
A boy with grit-impressed skin, enflamed eyes,
dust in his breath. He buys a weedy pie-slice
of land near the train tracks, where he constructs
a marker from bent rebar, chicken wire,
and mortar that he adorns with conch shells,
a boot, buttons, pebbles, corncobs, glass shards.
In dreams, his marker becomes a tower,
a lithe finger that spires into the sky.