the archetypes don't apply

-
the archetypes don't apply
The night-tossed pile of crinkled paperbacks 
don’t guide him through the cold-light labyrinth 
of cobalt halls at Lufton Middle. That stack 
of illustrated books with muscled men 
and swords that ooze of goblin blood seem worlds 
away from where a backpacked boy creeps toward
the light-lined dungeon door of Mrs. Marlow’s 
room, where sweating sixth-grade boys are stored
in hard-backed cells until the third-block bell
unlocks the grated door. They do not tell 
him how to navigate the siren songs
of 8th-grade girls reclining in the hall 
beside the water fountain, who wink despite
the water in their bloodshot eyes that tells 
of virgin cigarettes; or how to fight 
the armored warriors from the realm
of white-striped astroturf who come invade
the locker room with bawdy battle-shouts,
then force his tousled sacrificial head
down deep into the porcelain Charybdis;
and when he sees the nymph with river ribbons
shoved down in rubber playground chips
that stick to bleeding knees, he's left alone
without their stories as a guiding script,
                                               he thinks.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Line of Thinking

-
THE LINE OF THINKING The line of thinking runs  that given time enough—the funds— we might yet get in front of this.  That one day honey just does the list, and lo, the fixer-upper’s up and fixed,  the lawn at last trimmed low and all the laundry done, so give  it but a week or so and we'll at last begin to live the life we always imagined as something more than a growing list of pending repairs.  Of course, all this will come to pass only after the ballots are cast, the offices swept and emptied out  for our officials, who will, no doubt,  enact our will and set right the deluded line of thinking we’ve too long been governed by. Then once the baby sleeps through the night— or say instead the baby graduates and vacates the house—that will be our ticket to kick up our feet the way we've dreamed about and somehow come to expect, when we’ll rest as deep and long as Orion in repose, belt unclipped and bow leaned back in that ever-elusive posture of "rel...
Read more

the road behind the hill

-
the road behind the hill At 8:13, the solitary oak outside the kitchen window pulls down the sun with groping, fibrous fingers. Shadows stroke the stucco wall in stenciled lines, and on the counter, store-bought casserole is cold. His mother snores. He creaks the screened-in door to slide his bare feet over the concrete stoop in callous whispers. Outside, the evening air is soft as puppy’s breath. The grass is wet.        His mother’s face was wet the day his dad    had went away, wet Carolina sunset    streaks of red on cheeks that he had kissed.    John had moved in that year, a cheshire smile    from cheek to cheek that said “just call me dad,”    but whiskey fists can’t hide behind a smile.       Cicada song blankets his lilting stride across the lawn, his shuffle leaving strokes of green on cloth of dew...
Read more

on finding an eviction notice

-
on finding an eviction notice but we are young today, my dear, so let us dance — spinning to the sound of neighbors shouting upstairs, then pirouetting past the pile of unpaid bills that peer out smugly from their plastic window sills with urgent, time-stamped stares — let's laugh a laugh that resounds above the city sounds of taxicabs that pinball past in seedy streets below, a laugh that drowns the drone of evening news evaporating through the plastered walls too thin to block the mumbles of the neighbor's TV set: the traffic's clogged again on East Magnolia St — and then let's sing, my dear, let's sing the sort of song that takes the smoggy rain of weeping city skies [drumming the window-unit that hangs itself outside like wire-dangled sneakers] and turns it into tin-roof rain on farmhouse nights, a liquid lullaby to hush our streetlight minds and settle us both in sleep — and when we wa...
Read more