Bellevue Literary Review, Fall 2017
appeared as "Mower" 

Blades of Sleep
​
​ Father
 
you are the sleeper
 
for all of Tennessee
 
or at least
 
                                       Whites Creek--
 
       your snores roving
far country lawns
                            
private property
 
upon property
 
like the mower
whose blade
now and then
catches
                                     
odd stumps       rocks
     
rough scraps
of a Confederate flag
 
hitching your snagged breath
 
or a switchblade perhaps
belonging to one of those white
   boys who roved in packs
through the projects
back then
 
perhaps
one of those apples
  you poached along with the other
colored boys
                                            
from the white man
who caught you
and held up his rifle
 
or the elementary number two pencil
whose point the blonde girl plunged
into your wide open palm
leaving black spot still there to this day
you had been teasing
touching her hair
 
or that now-empty
  bottle for rotgut gin you could barely
choke down
to bond with your father
a man to whom
   it was water
 
one of three
small clay piglets
sculpted for your eight-year-old
by the second wife you met
in South Korea
 
now gone
 
or the stone
thrown by that teenager
that struck
the skull of one girl
                           who would die early
of a tumor
 
but not before
having heard
eight times
each time
for the first time
the word
Mother
 
whose ignoble end
    in that poor folks
    hospital
   we always need a few drinks
to remember aloud
 
I want to ask now
 
what’s catching
                           that mower blade
the hard spine of one more
book about Hitler and WWII
 
the chest where
  your father
      kept photos of women
          from his days in the navy
 
or a shuffle of papers
that let you
underaged into the army
 
a pool cue
                             a deck of cards
props for shooting the shit
in San Antonio
 
 
Pisa         Seoul           DC
 
Fort Hood
 
Walter Reed
 
South Korea    
    
     Germany                     Italy
 
or is it now
 
one of your own

   hollow    dry

Heineken bottles
 
and now I see    
 
eyelids are
                                                      fluttering open
          
what sharp blade’s edge
is now broken
 
 
what hidden acres
how long
 
                 are left
 
never done