Bellevue Literary Review, Fall 2017
Mower
Father
you are the sleeper
for all of Tennessee
or at least Whites Creek
your snores roving
far country lawns
private properties
like the mower
whose blade
now and then catches
odd stumps stones
thick scraps of Confederate flag
hitching in your breath
or a switchblade perhaps
belonging to one of those white
boys that roved in packs
back then
through the projects
perhaps one of those apples
you poached with the other
colored boys
from the white man who caught you
and held up his rifle
or the grade school pencil
whose graphite the blonde girl plunged
into your open palm
the black spot still there to this day
you had been teasing
touching her hair
or that now-empty bottle for rotgut
gin you barely choked down
to bond with a father
to whom it was water
one of three tiny clay piglets
fashioned for your eight-year-old son
by the second wife you met in South Korea
now gone
or the stone
flung by that teen that struck the girl’s skull
who would die early
of a tumor
but not before having heard
eight times
and each time for the first time
the word Mother
whose ignoble end
in the poor folks hospital
we get tipsy
to remember aloud
I want to ask now
what’s catching that blade
is it the hard spine of one more book
about Hitler
rustling bundle of legalities
that let you
underaged into the army
a pool cue
a deck of cards
for shooting the shit in San Antonio
Pisa Seoul DC
Fort Hood
Walter Reed
South Korea Germany Italy
or one of your own
hollow Heineken bottles
and now I see lids
are fluttering open
what honed edge has broken
what private acre
so long
can ever be done
Father
you are the sleeper
for all of Tennessee
or at least Whites Creek
your snores roving
far country lawns
private properties
like the mower
whose blade
now and then catches
odd stumps stones
thick scraps of Confederate flag
hitching in your breath
or a switchblade perhaps
belonging to one of those white
boys that roved in packs
back then
through the projects
perhaps one of those apples
you poached with the other
colored boys
from the white man who caught you
and held up his rifle
or the grade school pencil
whose graphite the blonde girl plunged
into your open palm
the black spot still there to this day
you had been teasing
touching her hair
or that now-empty bottle for rotgut
gin you barely choked down
to bond with a father
to whom it was water
one of three tiny clay piglets
fashioned for your eight-year-old son
by the second wife you met in South Korea
now gone
or the stone
flung by that teen that struck the girl’s skull
who would die early
of a tumor
but not before having heard
eight times
and each time for the first time
the word Mother
whose ignoble end
in the poor folks hospital
we get tipsy
to remember aloud
I want to ask now
what’s catching that blade
is it the hard spine of one more book
about Hitler
rustling bundle of legalities
that let you
underaged into the army
a pool cue
a deck of cards
for shooting the shit in San Antonio
Pisa Seoul DC
Fort Hood
Walter Reed
South Korea Germany Italy
or one of your own
hollow Heineken bottles
and now I see lids
are fluttering open
what honed edge has broken
what private acre
so long
can ever be done