hidden from view where i sit
in the sun with the sleepy cat
i hear shouts from young men
playing a game
soccer or volleyball
there are courts nearby
this is not unusual
yet something about the sound
and the color of the sky
hit’s me like a cosmic flyswatter
and i am ten
there
back there i can smell the blue sky
and taste the angry bee-buzz of
remote controlled airplanes
in my mouth like live marbles
the copper penny blood coin
heads up on the sidewalk
under the sole of my bare foot
i am there
it is wet mowed grass summer
and
and
and
my heart feels crushed
when the smell of the man-made lake
reaches me here across all
this time
this ridiculous calendar falsehood
because i am still there.
right there
barefoot in the grass
smelling hot gravel
the alyssum taste of summer
in the back of my throat
but my bones
my bones
taste like old gunpowder
Tag: nostalgia
memories of the hearth (20170317)
passing by fenced homes
i draw in the smell of fire
five years old again
my summer vacation (20160626)
i have sharpened corners
a six-sided box of a man
i don’t breathe anymore
so i can live my life backwards
everything flips
mirror-reversed
my past wriggles like a snake
drawn endlessly from my spine
a magician’s trick of
of unending handkerchiefs
outside a beautiful evening cools
while i think about
school and how far
i have run from learning
a damned
thing
winner winner (20160620)
grandma used to come over
for sunday dinner with her husband
–always called by name, never grandpa–
she and my mom would cook
enough for seven or eight of us
usually fried chicken
i don’t know what grandma thought of
my mother’s moving from husband
to husband like she was conducting
a wide-area survey but then
she was on her third husband
from the coop behind the house
grandma would pick two chickens
and wring their necks
washing and plucking them
in a tub of steaming water
until the backyard stank of wet hen
though some feathers were always
found during the meal
someone volunteered
–i think my brother, which
should have been a red flag–
to cut the throats
and hang the birds by their feet until
it was time to dress them and cook them
they gave up our plot of land
when my parents split up
goodbye to the chickens
the horses, too
from then on
everything was bloodless
and bought at the store
Words and Feathers 