An inappropriate outburst
during church raised eyebrows
of onlookers, Pharisees, keepers
of the law. But what about his law
the one inside his head that plays
the autism card? Trumps all;
game over. After the final Amen,
he brought me an apology note,
letters scrawled on the back of a bulletin,
hugged me, and said, “Grandaddy, please
don’t be mad at me.” An appropriate time
to demonstrate forgiveness.
The air was heavy with the sticky, sour smell of goblin men.
Introibo ad altare Dei.
1.
Then there was the winter it seemed we said goodbye to the sun.
Noches frías. Manos heladas. Hands immovable, guitar
impossible to play, tongues frozen behind the teeth.
On such a night, pinned between a distress and craving to please,
this fantasy came to be between the buildings and the balconies.
The moons float in alley water
like eggs embosomed by tin cups,
The moons coast in alley water
like eggs embosomed by jeweled, tiny tin cups.
Consume this simple meal given now to us.
2.
To know uncomplicated you is smoked bourbon steak hearts toasted
with black tar tobacco chicken wings together,
and the nuzzling of all of you is all of you and I— but
for the fear to see her face reflected in yours.
My ruin.
She follows in every face I choose to love.
She follows. As the bull’s bloody corpse who fought gallantly
in the arena, his manhood, ears, and tail removed for memorabilia.
Her three gorgeous emerald eyes within triple eyes of green,
and wild claws clenched to tear at my Earth,
the ones to pin pesetas and saetas on the Virgin
in the churches of the gypsy quarter—
I know there’s forgiveness for her.
3.
I know the taste of bluegrass moss on the ochre morning’s stone,
and the salt caramel fog on my tongue acrid from the bright flooded sea.
Starlight rises rudely to end our breakfasting on the midnight, crabs we shelled
beachside, opened, cracked, and crucified to a toasted, gutted rapture.
I thank all that is all and is for the glancing softness of your moonlit walking beach,
your taste whether foul, for once I don’t care. All I want is you.
Draw the curtains so tightly, light a candle to spit in the eyes of the sun.
Set out cups to catch the moonlets, take raw shots of memory for breakfast.
I wonder
If everyone else
Looks at the mundane:vitamins and ants
And dust that’s probably from Africa but it’s floating through my yard like birds
And hears a cadence in their mind
That trips over and through the temporal regions of my brain
Until I have to get it out and let your eyes read the kaleidoscope of thoughts.
I get this feeling whenever I return
to this ancient home of mine, after
going away – be it days or weeks
it feels a lot like completion to me
like I am never whole as long as I
am away from the place if my birth
and blood; though I take it with me
every place that I go – it is part of me
these hills and hollers gave me life
my parents grew up in Appalachia
right here in eastern Kentucky where
our families have been for generations
they were born here, as was I, on the
banks of the Ohio river in a small town
grew up here all my life, all thirty-eight
years of it, and I will be blessed if I die
in these foothills and sink beneath the
red clay that my great-papaw mined for
fire bricks when he was young and fit
it will be the greatest honor to forever
stay in Appalachia; be part of it always
there ain’t a place in this world my soul
desires to be more than this; give me to
the sandstone and mine, rivers, trees
give me to the land of my ancestors
let me always keep my Appalachian heart
Music reserved for remembrance.
and I cannot sleep. Today I backed
down from a dispute with a friend,
let fear of losing silence me.
So many losses these last few years,
one more felt like one too many.
I squelched my voice, shoved it down,
but after lights out, the argument
erupted in my head. What should I,
could I have said? Would she have heard
me? Would we have parted or come together?
Too late. I didn’t speak, so I don’t know
and now I only argue with my pillows.
I’m hungry for a house full
of hi Mom hugs and fleet kisses,
catching up over slow glasses of red
wine tart with dry humor
Many hands making fast work
in the cramped kitchen, voices
raised above the clamoring of pans
with remember when’s, inside jokes,
a sprinkle of bickering for spice,
our bellies simmering with laughter
that bubbles up and overflows,
making a meal together that fills me
with richness to savor long after
the front door shuts behind them
and the last car pulls away.
Distraction,
distraction is all this is, I feel,
as the slimey soap slides all over my fingers
daring to drop off the the plastic bubble wand set
as wasted liquid onto the concrete. The little bags
of goo in my head struggle to switch focus between
the blaring setting sun just behind him, the neon magic-maker
that I’m holding, and the jovial chaos in the in-between.
I want to hear the unknowingness in his laugh as I wave my arm
back and forth to capture nothing from something, to create
the most fragile of things, joy, but, they both elude me. Instead,
I think of all the things I think that I think that I should say,
my mind spun up by some cliche social media dictum: “the person
you are now is the person you would have felt safe with as a kid.”
A difference in time, but the same age, he and I, when we lose a grandmother,
and the kid in me then feels for the adult he may become. Will he be
riddled with guilt as the trimming hand of time snips memory thin,
consuming what once was so visceral? In my mind, in the absence
of any detail about her, I sit, alone in my childhood bedroom, and
realize that when I had so few questions but so many feelings,
I did anything to keep from letting them out, from letting them
through. Will my silence now be the snake that eats itself, or
will my prying further close the clamshell? Is there even the pearl of grief
at all, or was he spared this cursed gift? Before I have the time
to answer, his cacophany redirects me to the glistening trap I’ve managed
to produce, a globular existence that floats upward on the wind. Watching him
watch its haphazard choreography, longing for the moment of its bursting,
yet anxious that it may hold together just a little longer, I realize
the distract feeling is mine, alone.
