I found the old rifle
you took from a dead Jap
in World War Two,
supposedly.
my only memory:
you were sitting
with your mouth moving
and your hands shaking
in that red rocking chair
that my puppy tore up
when I got my first apartment.
I don't remember
a word you were saying.
and that night, dancing,
with your grand-daughter
at her third
wedding reception.
and sirens, the next morning,
you laying on the floor
still as a pillow,
and me, comforting my mother.
they shot guns off at your funeral.
I caught a glimpse of your tombstone
planted there, next to your wife's:
you had the same birthday as mine.
I wasn't old enough
his wife brings in
a wrapped package.
"from your daughter."
he opens it:
a bottle of grey goose
depicting
a flock of birds
flying over
monochromatic mountains,
with a blue tinge --
and if you look inside,
you can see a smaller family
of birds in the seascape
flying over a mountain peak.
he grunts.
"I wish you would tell
that cunt
to stop trying
to weasel her way
back into our lives."
she shows me the bottle now.
"my momma told me
he always thought
it was too beautiful to drink."
I smile, slightly.
I read the six-year old's
Martin Luther King Jr. Day assignment
on my aunt's refrigerator.
She wrote, "I had a dream
that mommy didn't have cancer
and didn't sleep so much."
I found my little sister's journal
the other day, and inside,
beyond the doodles and
high school freshman dramas,
there was a scribbled out poem,
but through the scratches, I read,
"when Nick went back to rehab
I lost my best friend."
and I remembered the note
my brother wrote,
blaming my divorced parents
for getting him placed in rehab,
with a rudimentary drawing,
a stick figure with middle finger
stuck straight up, and
"I hate you" scribbled beside
I held both my arms out
at my sides
extended far as they would
reach
and I started flapping them
to the beeps
metal on metal clanging
they didn't think I was funny
flashlight ain't waterproof by coreyfbaby, literature
Literature
flashlight ain't waterproof
I swam out into the ocean
it was cold
but I breathed deep
and dove under some big wave
the water was clearer
once I was underneath
a tadpole
got swept up
in a school of fish
that ducked beneath
rustling seaweed
a cute turtle crawled by
and snapped at my fingers
a vague gray swam by
but
an abstract
refracted figure
waving on the shore
caught my eye
and the sun started sinking
from the sky
we found a playground and swung
until our feet touched the skies,
rocked back and forth on frogs,
and raced across the monkey bars.
we sat in the metal jungle gym
flicking bottle caps at the trees
bodies shaking from the cold
so we found smoke to warm us up.
we ran through the sandbox
and I ruined my flip flops,
still haven't washed them, though
I wore 'em every day this weekend.
some kids paintballed our cars
and we started to run them down --
gave up before I opened my door
so I laid on my hood and
glanced up at the stars and grinned,
"hey maybe in another ten years,
we could do this again."
we found a playground and swung
until our feet touched the skies,
rocked back and forth on frogs,
and raced across the monkey bars.
we sat in the metal jungle gym
flicking bottle caps at the trees
bodies shaking from the cold
so we found smoke to warm us up.
we ran through the sandbox
and I ruined my flip flops,
still haven't washed them, though
I wore 'em every day this weekend.
some kids paintballed our cars
and we started to run them down --
gave up before I opened my door
so I laid on my hood and
glanced up at the stars and grinned,
"hey maybe in another ten years,
we could do this again."
flashlight ain't waterproof by coreyfbaby, literature
Literature
flashlight ain't waterproof
I swam out into the ocean
it was cold
but I breathed deep
and dove under some big wave
the water was clearer
once I was underneath
a tadpole
got swept up
in a school of fish
that ducked beneath
rustling seaweed
a cute turtle crawled by
and snapped at my fingers
a vague gray swam by
but
an abstract
refracted figure
waving on the shore
caught my eye
and the sun started sinking
from the sky
I held both my arms out
at my sides
extended far as they would
reach
and I started flapping them
to the beeps
metal on metal clanging
they didn't think I was funny
I read the six-year old's
Martin Luther King Jr. Day assignment
on my aunt's refrigerator.
She wrote, "I had a dream
that mommy didn't have cancer
and didn't sleep so much."
I found my little sister's journal
the other day, and inside,
beyond the doodles and
high school freshman dramas,
there was a scribbled out poem,
but through the scratches, I read,
"when Nick went back to rehab
I lost my best friend."
and I remembered the note
my brother wrote,
blaming my divorced parents
for getting him placed in rehab,
with a rudimentary drawing,
a stick figure with middle finger
stuck straight up, and
"I hate you" scribbled beside
his wife brings in
a wrapped package.
"from your daughter."
he opens it:
a bottle of grey goose
depicting
a flock of birds
flying over
monochromatic mountains,
with a blue tinge --
and if you look inside,
you can see a smaller family
of birds in the seascape
flying over a mountain peak.
he grunts.
"I wish you would tell
that cunt
to stop trying
to weasel her way
back into our lives."
she shows me the bottle now.
"my momma told me
he always thought
it was too beautiful to drink."
I smile, slightly.