Janine Joseph

Every Good Boy Does Fine

I aimed the lemon bar and pitched it.
I framed then flicked—our photos from the wall.
I slammed the door. Edged the Jersey barrier.
I’m sorry. My wrecking hands,
I explained. My head of wanting to
—wanting to, I couldn’t explain. I said, Understand
I understand how someone could—.
I couldn’t explain. So we could laugh, I called myself
The Incredible Hulk.
But I wanted to boil a bath to kneel into. Me and the laughing bubbles
bursting discordant. I wanted my childhood of rice to kneel onto.
I couldn’t explain. Keep a Gratitude Journal, they said.
I confessed—told them as a child I selected the weapons of my punishment. Told them about the armoire of buckles and wood.
How once all night I was punished out.
How once all night my temperature dropped by the pool.
How then the coaches at school knew what to do with my body
built to take a blow and put me on the field
on defense. Get plenty of rest, they said.
What if—, I said. On a loop,
What if—. What
hell was hel-
ixing in me, no one could say.

In the book I read, a concussion walloped its wife, then swallowed its hammer.

I roosted alone
in a loft with hardwood floors and floor-to-ceiling windows.
From everywhere in it you could hear me expose the bone.

Born in the Philippines, Janine Joseph is the author of Decade of the Brain (Alice James, 2023) and Driving Without a License (2016), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize. Her libretti for the Houston Grand Opera and Washington Master Chorale includes The Art of Our Healers, What Wings They Were, “On This Muddy Water”: Voices from the Houston Ship Channel, and From My Mother's Mother. A co-organizer for Undocupoets, she is an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University.