yonder
He drew his breath from stones as they threw them
“Hey Faggot, them books heavy?”
the way the light shone snatched his gaze
voices in the distance always faded away into a bird’s flight
a synapse orgy
a breeze scented of death
Pa didn’t let him own pages
tasked with crop and barn
the horses
their foul aftermath and the Bible
his body worked fields
his mind worked plows chained to cloud shapes
fluffs of octagons
dimensions and time machines
the discourse of family madness
his nightly sobs and grasping of sanity
an intricately patterned harvest
blankets and coverlings of crying mouths and empty flattened teats
the horror eyes of creatures the second before slaughter
the ants marching along little trails of crumbled crackers
Pa hollars
as the woods and songs called from
yonder
he planned to leave Pa and this land where earth gently graced sky
where feces gift life and dark is for resting spent bones
he would live smooth handed and walk scholarly halls
with hushed whispers, spectacles and sleep deprived eyes
His body would soften
Eventually
he would send a book he wrote to his Pa
Who would burn it in his evening fire
Who would never read the dedication
Who would feel no pride
devoid of what he had seen when he flipped the pages
denying the life and mind he bred
concentrating fiercely on the Lord's verses
reciting them especially loud that night
nsj
march 2011
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