by JS Gilbert
i meant to write this yesterday
as space and time allowed
but my son came down in his baseball cap
and asked to watch a show
we’re trapped inside this iso home
together and alone
passing time adjacently
as he just gets more grown
so while my craft is withering
and needs attentive care
i’m not about to let this chance
pass by me
unaware
They say cats bring gifts, wriggling, to
our doorsteps because they don’t trust
us to feed ourselves and so we should be
thankful for snakes, voles, moles, and mice
carried haughtily up the steps but
I’m not the one who falls off the bed.
Still I couldn’t think of a damn
thing to write. Couldn’t catch the bird
in the bush despite the pen in my hand
as he sauntered toward the screen,
robin thrashing in his jaws, and said,
through a mouth-full of feathers,
‘Well?’
Have you,
of a morning,
been running,
when two mailboxes,
black, at the top of a rise,
align, and,
from the corner of your eye,
(if you squint)
nearly plausibly resemble a
tight-wound dog,
coiled and wagging,
anxious to bound and
crash with love,
lick the lonely from your face?
Yeah.
Me either.
I don’t know
what
angelic aerodynamics were involved
in sending Christ from his Father’s
right hand to Mary’s womb
but when my son took
off toward his grandparents at
140 knots my heart leapt
to follow with stubby wings
which floundered
in his wake and I
wasn’t even sending him
to be crucified
only coddled by flight
attendants who knew
exactly who
he was.
When our office switched from recyclable
cups to sustainable mugs my boss
said she never pours tea into coffee
mugs because coffee was a thoughtless
guest who never, really, leaves, like
there’s always one sock left under
the couch to be found six months later.
I shrugged because I’d never found so
much as a quarter beneath the cushions.
Jesus, too, warned against pouring new
wine into old wine skins lest they burst
and stain the carpet but my coffee
mug has never
yet
cracked.
In the water park they gather
beneath its tilting lip,
their bodies sway with waves
held high in the cauldron perched above
their heads, swinging further deeper drip by drip
until gravity overtakes anxiety
falls, crashes against hunched shoulders
or upturned faces and just misses the feet
of the boy afraid of.
But in the future he crafts a future
from the backseat after school
knowing someday our feetprints will shape
the face of Mars which takes
a lot of water and a lot of air
that someone will have to carry
in maybe a big bucket like at the park
carried by bigger rockets but the air
might escape so the bucket will need a lid.
There are few opening lines more pretentious than
‘I have a hot tub’—maybe ‘I don’t own a TV’ or
‘I read The Economist’—but it’s true and anyway
it’s for my wife’s fibromyalgia and it was on sale
and there’s no other way to explain the leaves that
become trapped and float unnoticed to the surface
sink beneath the jets lost in the flotsom to wind
between our toes and lay at the bottom of this
chemical bath dying as we relax color fading like
an astronaut without oxygen who can’t keep her
eyes open as the warnings flash 15 10 5 3 percent
red through her eyelids but she’s long since succumbed
to an isolated slumber and slipped down to death to
wind between God’s toes, a leaf in the filter but
he still knows her name.
I cannot draw
but I did
my best to gild
the functional canvas of
his
field-trip lunch sacks
with apple trees and
iron gates and
atoms and books.
(It was the only way
I could be
there and anyway
PB&J
is boring enough.)
The truth wasn’t,
though.
Needed neither apples nor atoms
to make it
any more
there
but we can’t help
ourselves with
such scintillating sin.
(We save our
sharpest
crayons for the
cleanest
lines of our
deepest
fears.)
Still
I wanted to draw
that Sunday,
as someone stood
in your stead,
the way you were:
hands raised in blessing
bouncing on your feet
so willing to
love
us and me and them and
him
as God so
loved
the world
with, surely, angels
at your side and behind
and around.
But I could only
see a darkness
billow from
organ pipes
to claim your shadow,
sneak from
under choir robes
wrap your wrists
(again)
in chains and
the laughter couldn’t’ve
been yours because you
were screaming
as its claws sunk beneath
your soul.
So instead
I wept
because I have such trouble
drawing hands.
Probable Cause
They were hoodled
against
the frost and crossed
against
the light
across
the path of the officers
who—
jackets unzipped
—pulled to the side,
searched pockets
and coats for
evidence
they weren’t white
enough to saunter
through the cold.
Published in Strange City Digest, Winter/Spring 2021.