There’s always that guy
Who tells you
What to wear to look better
Your poem is not a poem
Your argument lacks profundity
To stop eating carbs to lose weight
Why you won’t win your case
Where you should put
the sofa
the landscaping
your mouth
When you should
eat
fast
come
stay
go.
There’s always that guy.
I’m so tired of him.
Years before I was born, someone erected
the three crosses that stood on KY-490:
two in white and the center cross yellow.
For years, I believed that was where Jesus died,
off a two-lane state highway a couple miles away
from the trailer we’d carried from next to the kennels
to a little glen and its woods behind it.
Further down the road, my grandparents’ farm
and the little holiness church we attended–
and this patch of Earth felt as big as the world,
as ineffable and ancient as time–three cable channels
and worn VHS a portal to some kind of future.
***trigger warning: violence in Lexington***
Do I scare you?
What’s that feeling in your stomach
when you admit needing to breathe
between sections of my poetry?
Remember that day
somebody pulled a gun
in Fayette Mall?
(It’s happening in our city)
Didn’t even know we had a mobile command center.
It’s not something you really think about
until it’s pulling in front of you in traffic.
I also remember the night
gunfire broke out in the parking lot
of my then-favorite bar,
leaving three wounded
the vague texts
in the following morning
context
filling in through
the day
the traumatized friends.
Have I scared you?
What’s that breath of fresh air
you need before the next stanza?
I guarantee you,
better here in a poem
than someday on the news.
Because according to the official timeline of that bar shooting,
only about a minute had passed
between my pulling out the parking lot
and the pulling of the first trigger.
Heart of gold under a chain of gold
lying on his sweaty white wife-beater.
Gang life behind him, twenty dollar
yard work and some dealin
kept the rotting red shack
taped around parents, wife, dogs, stray kittens.
Missing teeth and shouting matches in the
midnight street, behind an easy smile.
A Christmas card, illegible scratching with
a pen, a gold cross in a tattered gift box
contained only a little blood.
Desert tortoise stomps tiny elephant feet, rain-drummed mimic draws worms.
In an open field I stand,
Barefoot at the bottom of a Kentucky Rolling Hill,
Cool blades of thick green grass cushion each step,
A velveteen carpet stretching as far as the eye can see
Melting into the distant horizon.
A passing breeze cools my skin.
I march on. A summit to conquer.
I will not be defeated.
A few steps more.
On top of the world,
I stretch out my arms and twirl, twirl, twirl.
There’s no one here but me.
I am free.
I look up.
What do I see?
Not a cloud in the sky,
Its colors – perfect blend of blue,
Skye, Baby, Sapphire, Iceberg and Cerulean.
I look down.
What do I see?
An open field below.
Cool blades of thick green grass cushion each step,
A velveteen carpet stretching as far as the eye can see
Melting into the distant horizon.
Seated at the bottom of this Kentucky Rolling Hill,
An isolated and beautiful,
White Barn
youth
chalice embalmed in translucent eggshell
framed by birds in their return from the sea
edging bright spirit of albumen
flute in mouth between labial folds lips of
a goblet rim vines curl under footsoles of
the son of cups
whose music is a silver and liquid amber
show me your crossed legs
muscles brought into definition by
a primitive chiaroscuro…
you didn’t do it to trigger me
you just forgot about my history of self harm:
you pretended to stab me after slitting open
an Amazon box with our kitchen knife.
I froze and stared at you, mouth open.
you laughed.
you did it to be funny
you did it as a joke
I’m the joke
for believing you’d care
about trauma apart from your own.
Crafting an Us was like sculpting
A marble block
Raw potential, simple lines, aggressive edges
We took turns holding the chisel
Which more often than not was used as a hammer
No tender strokes
But destructive blows
Chunks flying left and right
No way to put it back
It’s gone, that part
There goes yet another one
We took more than we brought
To the table
To each other’s time
To art
Crafting an Us was like sculpting
A shapeless chaos
Signed by our butterfingered hands
Precarious attempts
At love
And life
