One Poem by Bartholomew Barker

 

Folktales

Summer in Ohio
is when thunderstorms
roam the cornfields
like predators

I was a nervous boy
always had a tummy ache
the yellow bubbling
nausea of anxiety

When the night
was lightning lit
I would wake my father
and in a rocking chair

He'd tell me about three pigs
concluding with the solid fact
that we lived in a brick house
which no storm could blow down

But this grown poet
sees man-made tornadoes
roiling every horizon
and my stomach still shivers

I just want to crawl
back to that rocking chair
in that brick house
in that old story

Back to the safety
of my father's lap

Bartholomew Barker works with Living Poetry. He has published a full-length collection, a chapbook and been nominated for a Pushcart and the Best of the Net. His work has recently appeared in Panoply, Tipton Poetry Journal, Free Verse Revolution, the Gyroscope Review and the Naugatuck River Review among others. www.bartbarkerpoet.com