Issue
1:2 | Poetry |
Darnell Arnoult
I liked
to live in the old
kind of
house.
Plenty
of good
cracks
in the floor.
Finish
your corn bread.
Sweep
the crumbs
through
the cracks.
Under
the old kind of house
chickens
would get em
fast as
they'd fall.
CLEAR
WATER
Captain
Til Lester
kicked
some engineering ass.
Two million
gallons
of fire
reservoir. Looked like
a Roman
coliseum.
Circles
in circles.
Each ring
deeper toward middle.
I liked
to drown there.
Buck cut
a double
gainer
once from the high dive.
Sliced
the still blue glass
of fourteen
feet like a long
slender
splinter into skin.
SOME
IN PIECES
In World
War Two
the oldest
of my
uncles
picked
up
dead bodies
dead weight
some in
pieces
and threw
them
onto the
beds
of trucks.
His work
spread
far as
he could see.
When he
came
home he
poured
salted
peanuts
into a
Co-Cola
and prepared
for life
with folks
who could
never
know
some things
as long
as they
lived
HOUSE
PARTY
A claw
hammer
talks and
a fiddle
trills June Bug
music. Feet become instruments.
Soldiers
Joy. Forked Deer.
Autho's
feet slip and glide
across
saw dusted boards, his jump
so slight
you can't
see him
carry
melody on
toes. The bow draws a sad note from
fiddle
strings
and Eslie
puts a
plate on Autho's
snowy
head. His feet stroke pine boards.
His head
scarcely
moves. Soles
of his
shoes pumice the
floorboards
under his feet as if
boards
were
strings
that vibrate
tone and
rhythm under
the dexterous
weight of fingertips.
Darnell
Arnoult