Accident
I didn’t cry when the car struck
her body into the air
twirling sideways
like a pinwheel of limp limbs
I stood in awful observance
as she smacked the asphalt
could barely bark baby!
from back of throat
Her scream curdled my silence
She sat up mid-road alone
red veil hands over countenance
every anxious second expanding in my lull
I ran to her confused puddle and bent down
she was trying to reason
We had the green walking man, babe
I saw the green walking man
Crowd moved in like fog
driver approached with all oblivion
said a futile I’m sorry
to my blankness
Her face swelled twice its size
before EMT’s wheeled her in
their wailing ambulance
The drive to the hospital was quiet
my thoughts turned to phone calls
then the tremble in my voice
Recovery
We take short walks around the hall
she gets better at it everyday
but is afraid her hunch will be permanent
Nurses glance from their computers
some smile endearingly
or say looking good Ms. Love
Each room we pass
beeps coughs or gasps
TV’s ramble and screech
Wrinkled faces stare with void
some twist and grimace
some plead with strange eyes
Insides
Looking to penetrate the still black of your eyes
to trudge through your damp
hyaloid canal
and sit in deep quiet
Where forced experiences flash
and recede like low tides
raking layers of sand, foam, and plastic
the applied worth of surfaces
emptied clean
I know you're in there
coiled like rope in a cellar
because I'm all the way
across sun and murmuring
under parades of colorful flesh
stirring calm blues
consumed in the same
silence
Fork Littered Road
A red wheel barrel brimmed with cash
bumps down to corner store
to buy a gallon of milk
beside sweat pulsing finger nails
bronzed with rich earth’s summer salads
uprooted for a day’s wage,
in the golden gleam of flaxen hill expanse
where hosts of corn stalks sway
the pending harvest of cheap cow feed,
beneath black clouds of bitter motor smoke
and thunderous booms of angry steel
where waste is plundered for plastic and aluminum,
behind deadbolts and hanging chains
where televisions blare applause and laughter
while mouths and eyes are avoided on street,
among the hovering must of wet leaves
where poetry crawls like an ant to its colony
dragging a crumb fit for a queen.
I didn’t cry when the car struck
her body into the air
twirling sideways
like a pinwheel of limp limbs
I stood in awful observance
as she smacked the asphalt
could barely bark baby!
from back of throat
Her scream curdled my silence
She sat up mid-road alone
red veil hands over countenance
every anxious second expanding in my lull
I ran to her confused puddle and bent down
she was trying to reason
We had the green walking man, babe
I saw the green walking man
Crowd moved in like fog
driver approached with all oblivion
said a futile I’m sorry
to my blankness
Her face swelled twice its size
before EMT’s wheeled her in
their wailing ambulance
The drive to the hospital was quiet
my thoughts turned to phone calls
then the tremble in my voice
Recovery
We take short walks around the hall
she gets better at it everyday
but is afraid her hunch will be permanent
Nurses glance from their computers
some smile endearingly
or say looking good Ms. Love
Each room we pass
beeps coughs or gasps
TV’s ramble and screech
Wrinkled faces stare with void
some twist and grimace
some plead with strange eyes
Insides
Looking to penetrate the still black of your eyes
to trudge through your damp
hyaloid canal
and sit in deep quiet
Where forced experiences flash
and recede like low tides
raking layers of sand, foam, and plastic
the applied worth of surfaces
emptied clean
I know you're in there
coiled like rope in a cellar
because I'm all the way
across sun and murmuring
under parades of colorful flesh
stirring calm blues
consumed in the same
silence
Fork Littered Road
A red wheel barrel brimmed with cash
bumps down to corner store
to buy a gallon of milk
beside sweat pulsing finger nails
bronzed with rich earth’s summer salads
uprooted for a day’s wage,
in the golden gleam of flaxen hill expanse
where hosts of corn stalks sway
the pending harvest of cheap cow feed,
beneath black clouds of bitter motor smoke
and thunderous booms of angry steel
where waste is plundered for plastic and aluminum,
behind deadbolts and hanging chains
where televisions blare applause and laughter
while mouths and eyes are avoided on street,
among the hovering must of wet leaves
where poetry crawls like an ant to its colony
dragging a crumb fit for a queen.