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What
Made Me Do That to You
We
watched laundry
in
windowed steel machines,
the
humid dryers’ air
weighing
our eyelids down,
never
closing
on
the warped plastic chairs
with
their curved
upward
edges
took
the sharp
needly
point
of
leaf
long
and slender
in
the aisles of second hand stores
dust
rose from faded shades
of
brown corduroy sofas.
Black
and white TV screens
flipped
continuously,
the
horizontal always broken
though
we twisted knobs
trying
to watch reruns of Gunsmoke
chased
you
sticking
the
leaf-dart
in
your shoulder
we
lay on the floor
eyes
turned from the afternoon
National
Geographic animal shows
staring
at the air conditioner
unplugged,
rusting
made
you fall
on
a brick
as
if beat
and
cornered
breaking
your
collar bone.
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Broken
Glass
“There’s
been an accident,”
Daddy
says. “Did somebody
die?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Who
was it?”
Mom
smiles crooked
when
she sits.
“I’ve
had an accident.”
“Did
you fall down?”
“No
honey. A traffic light
fell
into my windshield.”
A
wrecker
backs
her car
into
the driveway.
A
dog’s mouth, rabid
from
a raccoon bite
foams
on TV.
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Trestle
Crossing
Coal
tar reek in August heat,
we
watch carp and fronds weave
in
water. Dropped rocks move
so
slow fish don’t care. Dreams
of
train whistles forcing
a
thirty foot jump, or loping
the
wooden tracks, tripping:
a
train rush over us.
We find
flattened
pennies other boys
forget
to claim. Cattails,
mosquito
swarms in weeds,
spider
webs between rocks,
thunder
sounds at sundown.
At
home, heat lightening
and
jitterbug huzzz. Cats
eat
moths by porch light,
and
fire, fire against
the
woods. Walk the moonlit
grass,
catch earth smells—
horse
dung in collapsed barn stalls.
An
Indian is buried here somewhere.
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