Logan February

The Honest Lie

The honest lie is the tree, green & heavy
with mangoes. Tap roots braided deep

into the earth, like genetic strands. How 
my origin never lets me go far. Every pebble

is a homeland, every door in this city opens 
into my mother’s bedroom, with her sad eyes

& her bible. & I can never tell which has 
more stories. I may be the only thing

my mother doesn’t know. Before she goes 
to sleep, she maps the space my father

left in their bed, smaller this year, but still 
grotesque as a tree branch. The yellow mangoes

are ripe & stubborn, won’t fall to the ground. 
Too much narcissism to leave behind

an ugly corpse. So a fruit bat mauls the pale 
skin. & isn’t that how it always goes. The wicked

& their taste for me, when they cannot sleep. 
I want to tell my mother how I am some boy’s

elegant midnight snack, low-calorie, leaving 
his mouth wet with fructose & decadent color.

We watch the bats give birth to more bats & 
he is every teeth mark that does not love me.

Mother, who do you love when you dream?
The curve of your every eyelash, clean 

as a delicate ax-head, how every dying man is 
cut down, then set free. & I am your son, but 

my father’s also. Before morning, the wind 
loots the tree, leaves it standing naked. 

On the ground, mango corpses after all, 
lying filthy outside this same house where 

everything red stays red with no apology.