He sewed his thumb back on in the woods

with some fishing line

I have broken my arm twice

and each time I sucked in a lot of air and teared up

waiting in a clean hospital ER for a bed

going like this:

oooh-ahhhh-ooooh-ahhhh

and been a bitch otherwise my entire life

when he tells me about them boys at work

running the machines into the ground

I go along with him

and say, you can’t find anybody worth a durn

and he agrees with a grunt

then tells me about being shot at by union men

that wanted the job he and his father took

because it was their state

and his father almost ran them over with a truck

and he tells me that he once went

to a martial arts gym and the black belt instructor

couldn’t do anything to keep him down

one time a guy picked him up in the air

with a lift and shook it so he might fall

much to the laughs of the other men

and he put vice grips around this man’s chest

and squeezed on them until ribs were broken

after he finally let him down

and I nodded and grunted and yessir’d my way

up until my girlfriend’s mom asked me

what tool he’s referring to when he talks about

fixing this thing on the cherry pickers they broke

I stutter for a second and then turn to look at her

now joined by my girlfriend

grinning like hungry wolves.