New Pennies, Old Pigeons

I was born under a halogen bulb,
misplaced constellation of the old country
and new whiteness. Childhood was a spiced
picket fence, a gentrified tenement,
and here I learned to want,
the way guns just need to be emptied
into the pink breasts of pigeons.

Mother was a dress form, satin like custard,
the fantasy of stockings and the thighs
beneath them and father ripped both
nightly, nails like pen nibs and curses.

If I had more seamstress and less poet,
more feathers and less whisker, maybe
I could have wanted less like a bullet
and more like the bird.