Teenaged boys
with single shot squirrel rifles,
trying to recreate
Bonnie and Clyde’s car,
plinking away,
one twenty-two at a time.
Hard to know what
they were thinking
except I was one
of the would-be G-men.
Black sedans
hidden in a gully
under years of kudzu
windows gone,
headlights bashed,
fenders and doors
riddled with holes.
The rightful owners
dead nearly a century,
the shooters all old men
at three am
I worry
if I am awake
I play spades
drink coffee
write poetry
and long
philosophical pieces
none will read
this is normal
do not worry
for me
246
pouring coffee
contemplates breakfast
lone sugar ant scurries
still in my chair
the good morning darkness,
a day for ladders
a spare bird
leans out over the tracks
in search of what
cane fires smudge
dirty fingerprints
on the clear blue sky
chair, ottoman
laptop, blackscreen TV
treadmill rolls, sore legs
Coffee, no cake, no cigarettes
hot peppers grow in the warm dark
I think of breakfast
You dream of shower curtains,
I of paying bills
both of travel
we go nowhere.
scattered across
the bridge:
paint chips,
too cold for snow,
what looked like
a hundred feet
to the freezing river
slush chunks
white in
the black water.
some do-gooder
gave me a peanut
butter sandwich
hours ago.
The ice slides
under my shoe
full of holes.
Hunger slides
under my cold,
yet I can write
with a pencil
on the yellowed walls
of my brain.
Smooth gray lead
sliding over
the paper
third-grade penmanship
in Mrs. Foshee’s
warm classroom.
Paper makes a blanket
for my frozen mind
in the well of concrete
at the end of
the bridge.
I could write on old newsprint,
if I still had my pencil.
