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some message here, back roads, dusk, cows in half light, burnt tree stumps (black Angus), more sky, fields, woods than on the Interstate, less sense of where anyone is going if at all, as if simply being there was enough, and the others who seem to know so much more than we do, gone on ahead, an advertisement's destination. Here, clouds darken, lowering-that word! Is a storm coming, or is night simply falling the way night simply falls every evening no matter the day, no matter what has or hasn't happened, dark covering us, mantle, obliteration. The psychiatrist says, Wake up in another room. Night is the other room, the vessel we pour ourselves out of every morning, the clock ringing hope. Falling though, the world-toss, night, stocks, bonds, James Bond flung out of a plane to prove life is risk, that falling in love against our better judgment is our better judgment. We are taking a risk, here, alone, rain, this deserted way, asphalt wet, soft edges, deer, the temptation to fall- there it is again-asleep at the wheel, to let go, to find suddenly, or slowly, time has its own hands to choke-the throttle- or caress, the gas, that wherever we're going is no farther away than here, no different, this, destination within where we keep falling, even knowing, up. Starkey Flythe, Jr. This work is the author's work; it appears here with the permission of the author. We would like to remind our readers that it is a violation of copyright law to distribute this or any other poem appearing on the website without the express permission of the author.
was a lamp, brass, maybe brass-plated, a Chinese boy who'd stopped fishing, or had he been carrying something? the bamboo pole with the buckets either end, laid down there, by his feet. And he sat on the metal grass, made himself comfortable, was reading, the intensest look on his brass face, a pigtail, coolie jacket, pajama pants. I stared at it for hours, the kind of thing a child wants to be or to be in or to break, be punished for as if being a child had rest stops and pit falls that should be got over fast and with a definite crash instead of being drawn out, infinitely. The coolie leaned against the glass cylinder where the light bulb socket was, fluted glass so the light flowed out in rainbows, and you could imagine the words, how if you mispronounced a Chinese syllable it meant midwife (whatever that was) instead of peony (which didn't grow here). On the top was a pagoda lid. The glass broke first. The pagoda rested on the naked light bulb until it got hot. My father bought a lower watt bulb. Then, against the wall on the top of the book shelf the boy, once a lamp, became an end, leaned and held National Geos and paperbacks. I wonder where it went, not valuable enough to steal, beautiful enough to survive people moving, tastes changing, broken marriages, lares, penates, fire, the frayed electric cord. Starkey Flythe, Jr. This work is the author's work; it appears here with the permission of the author. We would like to remind our readers that it is a violation of copyright law to distribute this or any other poem appearing on the website without the express permission of the author. |
