National Poetry Month: “WHEN PRAYER DIDN’T AWAY THE GAY, MY DAD TAUGHT ME HOW TO PLAY DOOM ON THE FAMILY COMPUTER [Golden Shovel]”

               To start DOOM, go to the directory in which you have installed DOOM (the default is 
               DOOM), type DOOM, and press the Enter key
              — DOOM (1993) manual



I have this dream where I am the last person alive on a two-
dimensional earth, my body 3D like a fruit, and start-
ing to inside-out itself, until my gut is a skirt and my DOOM-
sense is like tastebuds on my arms. A wound is a place you go
—are taken to. I maybe eight maybe nine at the family computer, my eyes stitched to
the game as the pixelated blood made the borders of the
screen a sky of red like a theater. So says my memory directory:
my real body, you were bleeding for most of my childhood. The game’s killing an in-
cision in the animal belly of my life. The which
of it was, my young hands dressing my body as my real body, as you:
my mom’s earth-colored heels, my sister’s heaven-orange dress, have
we met? I’d hover my finger at my mother’s mirror like a name, installed
on the body-sized wall between the door and the window. DOOM
was my father’s game, and, to nail me back to my boyhood, the
day passed with his hand on my hand on the mouse, as his default
hung like a shoulder between us, as he moved my hand to precis-
ion the crosshairs, as he knuckled my finger down to shotgun a DOOM
sound, the blood parting a demon in two like teeth. Many types
of enemies were once human, the manual says. DOOM:
the distance between one body and the other. And
where do demons go when they die? I asked. My father’s hand press
-ing like a trigger the bone which thrones my neck on my shoulders. Nowhere, he said. The
 game a place where once-humans crawl from the earth’s wounds. My body like a hole in my 
 body. Enter
me, in the blue reach of the computer screen. You, my real body, unkilled, unwombed like a key.