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Three
Poems
by
Steve Meador
Sign
Language
There
was never a conversation with Susie,
no
grunted words slung from a passing swing
or
breathless banter rolled from the high
end
of the teeter-totter.
There
is no voice to recall, only a plaid dress
draped
over a white blouse. The same dress worn
day
after day, which murmured its own words
beneath
the dark tongue of her ponytail.
Near
the end of the year, after I had pissed
my
pants because someone hadn’t flipped
the
red circle hanging on the restroom door
to
green, Susie finally had something to say.
I
looked across two aisles and she pointed
her
finger at me, then touched it to the corner
of
her eye. She repeated the motions. Slowly
spreading
her legs she lowered the finger
and
aimed it between them, at the yellow panties.
I
have never read Robert Fulghum’s book,
but
I damn-well know that he didn’t learn
everything
in
kindergarten.
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High
and Low Tide
A
tsunami of Somali boys ripped over the threshold.
They
scattered like bits of seashells and filled aisles
like
a black tide. Hands lapped at the store shelves,
hoping
to be quicker than the eye. Tense minutes
of
ebb and flow passed before we told them to get out.
The
oldest, the pre-pimple alpha thief, asked what
we
would do to shoplifters. I snatched the fisherman’s
billy
from my pocket and stung my palm with a slap,
“First,
I’d wait until the prick walks out the door—
everything
has to be legal—then creep up behind him,
whack
him viciously on the head time after time after
time.
A sea of blood would spew into the gutter.
“Then
I would pick some weeds, sweep the sidewalk,
take
out the garbage and wait and wait before calling
the
rescue squad. Poor brainless bastard would scorch
like
a beached porpoise. Come, boys, see the weeds in my
daylilies.
Look at the sand on my sidewalk and those full
trash
cans.” Behind me I heard shuffling feet recede across
the
threshold and squawks from a flustered flock of gulls.
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Monday
Morning at the Diner
I
went to the convention,
it
was alright I guess,
except
they had these young girls
trying
to serve that shit
they
called la-tay and capacini.
I
wouldn’t drink it,
hell,
I got a whole muddy river
running
through my place
what
looks just like the crap
they
claimed was coffee.
I
told ‘em come on to my town,
we’ll
hop over to the diner,
order
a big ‘un, black.
Now
that’s coffee that’ll flutter your tongue,
knock
you panties past your knees,
and
if you want it to look like
that
muddy-ass river you can either
pump
it full of cream, or go scoop
a
cup of river water.
They
giggled, then the one with the little
titties
said they weren’t allowed
to
leave the convention center.
That
was probably for good cause.
They
would likely both drown,
even
though the river
is
only peter-deep in most places.
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