smash

I am no ones husband,

although each spring I tend to a plumb tree

that has no pollinator; compelled

to the presage of vinegar,

I slit the earth like an Egyptian

and rolled a blood stained leaf/.

Tell me how love acts as transcendental,

functions expendable as infinite and occurring?

I am so un-good at excellence.

"So now the plumb tree is your ho"

my girlfriend asks? Passing before me

in a tube top in November,

we make moose eyes over honey nut cheerios

that nether glow in the driving dark,

under the bluest of skies  filled with angry hawks.

Recalling how your dad hit the deer on the

unlit road, then sat for hours staring off

like that part of printing where one drags

angles or adjusts surfaces. Drove home

and for that one and only time,

prayed, Bhakti and devotional.

Told us the story of how all deer

come back to life but this time with special

markings, possessing the magical properties

of all the lost  souls from the hereafter.

But we never,  not once,  believed him.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

a friend of mine and i decided once we were going to write a novel together....what it ended up being is a short story that i wrote on my own called "Pets"---steven kingish...it was built on the concept of all the roadkill coming back to haunt and cause everyone who ever hit an animal on the road to be driven off the road by the ghost of these dead animals.

the humans became the roadkill..

oh they will come back, they will have their day...it will be magic...but a black magic, not in our favor.

this poem brought me back to that road...a place in Vermont that i made up in my mind.
i feel a certain sadness each time i see one lying on the road...even the silly squirrels...

and i think of how un-good i am...how un-good humans can be...and wonder if we really make a mark on this life we live...or do we end up no better than roadkill once our existence ends.

thoughtful poem as usual.

[JC]

maybe because I'm listening to King Automatic, and had a few beers, and was in a musical creation land with old friend earlier that sends my mind into outer space, or just because, but I envisioned this as a David Lynch short, and like a Lynch short I don't necessarily understand it all but am gripped in intrigue and find bits of Buddha like wonder... I really like the idea of deer coming from death to magic...

[W.k.kortas]

There is a boatload of clever wordplay here--the opening interplay between husband and husbandry, the notion of reproduction human and otherwise. Thre is birth and death and rebirth all over this from start to finish, myth and Cheerios, tube tops and lost souls. Absolute maginficence, nothing less; this piece walks with giants.

[emmajoy]

Your writing just wrings the mind and spirit.. always holds that something extra because you strip away layers as you tell the tale.

Death shadows all the chatter of ' sorries' that ever were.. no escape, no apology. But rips at the memory and leaves it in shreds: ' and for that one and only time, -- prayed, Bhakti and devotional.' What else other than not having committed the act, even though an accident. can a good man do.

Road-kill.. life-kill - breath and blood taken from once lived. To see the body, man or beast, leaves a mark on soul and conscience.. never mind the cause or reason.

The lead up to the disclosure created real pictures in my mind, dana.. and then suddenly though not too suddenly, you switched direction from, ' make moose eyes over honey nut cheerios .. that nether glow in the driving dark, -- under the bluest of skies filled with angry hawks.' to your final comment..which i think surely counters the rest.