grove of man
the secret shift
of letters-
your fingers
monkey mark
about a bird
you saw.
Two squirrels playing
tag atop a fence skitter
an inch from my face
as I round the blind corner.
We all reel back in surprise.
One panicked instant,
hearts hammering collective
fright, before we all
recover southern manners,
scoot politely to the side.
beneath our weathered wooden floorboard lays
a rotted plum
a pitted, gutted, worm home
akin to a flushed and plucked corpse
i hoped for tenderness
no skin to peel, only warmth hung loose, falling off the bone
i didn’t wish for it
but your blood dripped juicy from the corners of my mouth
i fear i wasted it.
i drifted south to our clawfoot tub
but i couldn’t bring myself to bathe
instead i knelt at its feet
and readied my skin for staining
brandished by your soft fictitious pulse
a reminder that i’ve sat in gray for far too long
swell and red and smeared orange
“If my engine works perfect on empty/ I guess I’ll drive.”
~Noah Kahan, Growing Sideways
When first we are set in motion,
we are taught to mind the lines,
to aim our feet, crayon, bowling ball, bike, or car
straight ahead, find our balance,
focus on a single point on the horizon.
We lean on hands to steady our wobbly body,
avoid outlines, gutter rails, training wheels, lane lines
those boundaries that were placed
to keep us safely contained.
Singers internalize the melody
before we trill a run or meld a harmony,
the lyric preceeds the scat,
notes composed before those improvised.
And now we are expected
to just live out here
with a beating heart in a body
and a brain of our own
we don’t always know how to nourish,
responding to its experiences?
Who thought it was safe
to hand over the keys to us,
unattended by wiser elders,
with nothing made of steel
to keep us from sailing off a cliff
on a sharp turn we never saw coming?
I could pretend nothing mattered while I beamed at my daughter
in her pink, steampunk glasses and oversized white shirt with an outrageous
floppy collar—that nothing bothered me, but my son was staring
bullets into my suddenly lucky face—presumably because I wasn’t admiring
him, and the heart of the boy seized behind brown eyes.
Tonight, the cascade of hair he’d grown flopped to protect
from intruders, and he felt the controls on the Nintendo Switch take
a road through Capri at top speeds, anything but be here now—a warm bottle
of Perrier at hand as usual, a strange compliment.
Tonight, her device clacked
under wisps of thumb, occasional taps of finger—she
learned the WiFi for Heine Brothers Coffee easily enough to linger
with friends never seen, never spoken with directly, nor correctly guessed
whether they were a suitable remedy for
the strange absence I left, the freakish caves
dotting the landscape under their suburban home,
and those dinners of cereal and milk in piled up bowls and boxes in her room.
His frappuccino heartache and stuff.
The sun setting boring again.
Some band, a lame IPA, and more BBQ shit.
You confess to forgetting what pleasure means.
The sun setting on Starbucks.
Neighborhood shopping in a neighborhood
where it’s cool to live, which means most people
live in some editorial of deleted space.
Not being able to afford anything
in 20 or 30 different photos.
The price of a single jalapeno.
Another apartment. A huge crane.
Suburbia is misery’s head
ache. Dinner with the parents.
He cries Titos in the driveway.
It never rains.
You win the + lottery with a pregnancy test
and move, happily, to Toledo.
“And…to pass and continue…I depart as air, I shake
my white locks at the runaway sun.”
