Bird
Feeder
Everyone
suddenly realized they
were
afraid. The wind still blows,
too
hard, sometimes. It won’t blow
me
back to my bed, no matter how
loose
my clothes. I offer up my
number
in tufts of confetti, but all
I
get in return are citations from
the
city. Even the meter maid crosses
the
street when she sees me coming.
I
park illegally with an open
and
waiting heart. We were always
getting
old, is the thing. We were
always
less than we wanted to be,
somehow
we could explain perfectly,
yet
it didn’t make a lot of sense. I took
down
my birdfeeder because the birds
made
too much of a mess. They came,
one
by one, to shit on my balcony
and
glare through the door. Expectation
is
the thing. Someone said that who
died
alone a long time ago.
The
Cave
The
blind man lingers outside the cave,
as
everyone he’s known cowers in fear
of
shadows. The only ones who know
what
casts them are the ones whose
company
won the contract. It was a
government
gig. Long-term. Took
years.
You better believe they over-
charged
us on stationary. Butt-warming
toilet
seats. They put their kids
through
college on the dimes they made
from
designing the mechanisms
of
our greatest fears and failures. Don’t
even
get me started on the company,
overseas,
that underbid to get the actual
construction
gig. The secret is that it
was
mostly the same folks. They’d
fly
to Korea to oversee the factory—
the
actual work was done by slave
children
as all actual work is done.
Mai
Taies on the beach—this is a private
beach
only the very wealthy know
about.
Those kind of people don’t read
poetry,
so it’s none of you, temporarily
embarrassed
millionaires as you may
think
you are. The blind man used
to
do a little technical writing for them—
work
for hire. He couldn’t say what
he
actually did. Process manuals.
Technical
communications. Even
the
executive overviews were nonsense.
His
401k dried up in the war. A lot
of
people wish they’d listened to assholes
like
him in those days.
Coffee
Table
Two
people, holding hands in the dark,
waiting
for entertainment. Something
that
never sells self-help books is the fact
that
lying is the best exercise. None of us
is
who we’d like our pets to believe
we
are, and we’ll never be. The enemy
came
from the north. They swept over
us
like wildfire, bullets strafing. I pushed
the
child into the ditch just as the first
explosion
came. Maybe it wasn’t a child.
Maybe
it was a duvet cover with a face
pattern.
But still, it spoke to me. As I ran
to
the orphanage door—or was it my balcony—
the
coffee table lunged for my toe.
Somehow,
I persevered. That’s the story
I’ll
be telling the historians as soon
as
they find someplace to park.
I
only did what anyone would’ve done
if
they’d been me.
The
Dealer
Suckers
hate the man beside them but never
raise
their eyes to the dealer. He might stop
renting
cards if we hurt his feelings. Romantic
types
call it love. I’m not the kind of person
who
sets himself on fire without looking both
ways
first. At a certain point, you realize
the
man who told you to hold the target to
the
sky isn’t coming back. Children call him
Daddy.
The reason we hurt the ones who love
us
is because they happen to be nearby. Civic-
minded
types call it community. The tabletop
is
such a pleasing shade of green, stripped
meticulously,
soft to the touch. A perfect place
to
lay my head when I’ve shrugged it off,
for
all the good it’s ever done me.
Dirt
Love
They
say loss can weigh,
but
maybe the dirt is just
lonely.
It engineered all
the
wrong to be close to
you.
You selfish mendicant.
All
this time, it’s been pulling
you
down so it can caress
your
pretty face, smell
the
light in your hair. It calls
and
calls your name, and you
let
it go to voicemail. Your
mouth
should fill with shame
the
next time you’re chit-
chatting
in an elevator, or
bothering
a broken brain on
the
bus. You had love on your
fingers
and you didn’t even
taste
it. Maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe
you’re just afraid to
embrace
the soil, settle into
its
warmth. You get what
you
give, everybody knows
that,
but sometimes, you get
before
or even without having
to.
There’s not a one of us
who
wouldn’t die for a kind
word
from the void. I can’t
even
look at you anymore
without
seeing everything
I’ve
squandered. You meant
well, I’m sure. We always do.
CL Bledsoe - Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than thirty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, The Bottle Episode, and his newest, Having a Baby to Save a Marriage, as well as his latest novels Goodbye, Mr. Lonely and The Saviors. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.
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