About Interations of the Boy & Selections Below

The starlings swim against the wind.

All of them together, synchronous, apparent order

within disorder, seeming contradictions,

a mathematical problem solved by

an algorithm, followed by calculations,

the common divisor, an infinite sequence of terms,

neither adhering nor contained within brackets.

I thought that God gave us a name for these things,

but not this, not the myth of their wings,

held in the rhythms of a living brain split open,

bare and exposed to the air, pulsating, 

beating like a heart, even breathing,

held by the order of a line in a poem 

or song, one that is coddled by gravity,

which keeps each thing in its place:

the ebb and pull of the earth,

the incline and turn of the mind

and its tendency to hold an idea,

to listen to the footsteps

and the dust left as a reminder,

a prayer for the living and the dead.

The myth of song slows the heart,

setting like the hibernating sun, lifting dusk, 

the orange glow as it too falls,

leaving the day behind.

Water drops are beads of sweat 

all about Dad’s face. The beads

around his eyes look like tears, but 

that can’t be right because 

I never once saw my dad cry, shed 

tears, or any man cry for that matter.  

Are you crying, Dad? I wondered.  

Do boys reach a certain age 

and then the body changes and shuts off the water?  

Girls cry, are weak, and boys are strong,

though women say a good cry is good.  

Is that how we are different, besides

the other things?  Never have I seen a man 

cry: not Dad, not Grandfather, not Peter, not 

John Wayne, not Randy Savage, not Hulk

Holgan, and definitely not Clint Eastwood. 

Jesus wept once in the shortest 

verse in the Bible, though he didn’t 

even cry on the cross despite such pain.

I wonder if God cries in his disappointment?  

Mama cries all the time; Grandma cries,

too; Mrs. Reed cries; Renee cries; I used 

to cry—until I got a little hair under 

my arm pits and I stopped crying—

I cry no more, no crying.  I think God 

must have made us different for his 

own reasons that I do not understand.  

Peter says girls are crybabies, and boys 

are tough like leather, though the boys 

who do cry are little girls crying.  

When Dad beats me with the belt he gets 

mad when I cry and threatens to beat me 

with the buckle even worse; so I stop 

crying—I used to cry, but I have held 

it in so it has gotten easier not to cry

so now I have forgotten how to cry. 

Why do we cry anyway?

Why did God make us this way?  

Do we fill up with water like a trough 

then overflow, crying? Where does the 

water go for men? I got a lump in my throat

when I used to cry. I cried when I cut 

my leg and cried when I didn’t get my way; I

cried out of fear in the lonely night,

cried when Peter beat me up, I

cried when I was angry, but I don’t 

cry anymore.  I am not quite old enough 

to shut it off completely on my own. 

When I do cry, I go behind the barn so 

not even the sheep can see me cry.

I am told that I am too old 

to cry as there is no use for it.

The sun crosses the fields,
stitching light into the furrows—
even his wounded eyes,
trained to trace rot in the seams of things,
lift to witness:

the bat and the rat
sharing the barn’s rafters,
the crow and the dove
trading hymns on the steeple,
this fragile truce—

tension and union.

His bowl is still filled with dirt,
but he is not so broken,

that he misses the rainbows 

or halos or spider webs floating 

in the mist of a sun-filled rain, 

his cup filling with the afterglow

of storm’s rage, the calming

of fury softened now
into a prism, into wings,
into the boy’s slow blink,
his tears drying in the sun.

She lies with her head on the couch propping 

it up with a pillow, tossing her slender hair, splayed 

like nerves, a million points on her head over the arm.

I start to brush through the thicket with the grain—

the ends first, gentle like she taught me, carefully teasing 

them out so not to stir up her aching tangled inside. 

She cares for her hair and teaches me to care too. 

When we started, she aimlessly stared at the ceiling, 

perhaps studying the cracks until her eyelids softly folded.

Her eyes beneath her lids quiver like two bow strings. 

She breaths freely and is trance-like. 

I watch her move from this world to the other. 

Her shadow disappears, revealing the secret of light, 

a rusty pearl, and the songbird. I brush, noticing her 

narrow lips, the line of her nose and jawbone; her thinness, 

how her face comes together without even a flaw. 

She is not dirt, not stone, not rock bone, not ash, not dust, 

not grave, but a soft plum given of its time. 

The mild moon rises slowly out from inside her 

to rest on her forehead. The straightened wind wanders 

in through the open window whisking up her hair.

Her hunger for loving attention is disguised in there.

Published in The Headlight Review. Hybrid artwork/poem featured on homepage. Kennesaw State University. October 2022.

The Boy in the Window

The wind rises, lifting the whirling leaves 

and with them, the crow and starling near the barn;

the horse, though, sinks deeper into the mud,

soaking, a basin of carved bone, shivering as the rain falls 

from the graphite sky.

The boy watches from his window,

the raindrops form spider webs that entangle him, 

droplets as lenses and upside-down images

and concave shapes that 

distort the barn, trees, grass, and fence.

The rain cannot wash away the mud

or lift the horse from it.

The rain is thick and steady.

The sky makes the chaotic droplets darker

and more defined, his fingerprints

are evidence that he has spent much time here

indifferent, watching, fooled by his focus, glazing

like a camera, his inner eye,

the beautiful simplicity, the 

enduring moment, an admission of sorts 

of suffering and endurance, 

an awakening from the daydream,

hypnotized by the patter on the glass.

Though the rain, there is no bursting of a desert flower.

The boy behind the window, his figure

barely visible, raises his whitewashed wings,

though dark and heavy from the rain –

too much, the palpable sadness of things.

What I desire in a nightmare

is to escape, to break it, 

separate the parts, to

reduce it to fragments, to

shatter it like crystal, shards,

to breathe easy, to forget,

to clear away the darkness

under the dense trees,

to see the sun seep through 

the spaces to gather memories 

that I think will make me whole, 

to travel great distances,

to a destination that is my own.

What I desire in a nightmare 

is for the morning to break 

through the night, to break

the spell cooked by the cackling witch,

to step out of my bed,

to open the curtain 

to enter the healing light.

Published in Jesus the Imagination, A Journal of Spiritual Revolution. Angelica Press. Hybrid work. Volume.3. May 2019.

Thief on the Cross

I took my black Crayola 

and made an outline of Jesus.

Grain silos stretched high, 

scratching a deep blue sky.

Charlie Horse was stuck in the mud. 

I then took the red one and drew my dad, 

I stuck a knife in his head. 

A red river flowed from it all the way to the end of the page.

Peter lay on the couch. Mama said he was a thief. 

The Lord’s cross was placed between them.

Peter was one of the thieves next to Jesus,

the one on the right hand, mocking Him. 

He did not keep his cup clean,

rather he was a grape gatherer who did not share his crop,

he stole the ox and sheep,

his hands were unclean.

Her message for salvation was the arm of the oak.

He wanted nothing to do with repentance or salvation

and instead chose death over life;

he rebuked her as the arm of the oak fell on his head.

She was giving a lesson.  

He laughed at her.  

She attacked him. 

They fell to the floor, entangled.

She swung hard and the oak came down on his head again.

He screamed bloody murder. 

He begged, along with me, for her to stop, 

but she kept going until Peter bled, 

drops of it fell on her white robe. 

Then Jesus said to her, 

“Put your sword back into its place.” 

But Mama sharpened her plowshare, 

her pickaxe, her mattock, and her sickle. 

But if the sun has risen, there is guilt for both.

He would be sold like the sheep,

bloodshed follows bloodshed.

Let her swallow what is left of his soul.

He stole the water and the bread

but he has no intention to repent,

violating the law of love. 

He did not want God's mercy.

He cannot turn back the clock. 

She snared him in her trap, like a rat 

and plunged him into ruin.

For hatred is the source of evil, 

no righteousness, godliness, faith, and love.

For Mama, Peter was a labor of love

or hate, as paradoxical as they are.

For him though, he did not know 

where to place the comma and

could not recognize the end of a sentence.

He had entered the sheep pen 

not by the gate, but climbed

over the fence the easy way. 

She told him to repent.

He said, “Over my dead body!”

Barn Burning

I stand at my window

watching the yellow flickering flames 

that climb their way out of the openings of the barn,

lift the scarlet darkness,

like in a silent film.  

Flames pour out of the barnyard door, 

thick, billowing smoke flows, escapes

from the silence, masking emptiness inside.

She offers a breath to fuel it, 

a releasing of sorts,

her flesh simmering like the hay and manure,

and bleeding like the barn boards.

The crying train rocks the house

and bends into the flames like old pain.

Mama stands near the gate, in her white, blood-stained robe, 

holding a gasoline can, looking on,

another version of herself, copper dipped in vinegar,

though her face is drained of blood.

God’s fingers did not light this fire,

it was not His creation,

but He was implicit in the night,

an eternal sadness was inside there,

vanishing like thawing snow.

She looks golden against the flames,

her wounded skin, torn flesh, ashen bone,

a shape-shifter, her wings flap

though she does not take flight, 

too heavy from her sins and grief

that she could not gloss over,

but too haunted by the space she filled,

another version of herself, cold, rusted steel,

standing beneath a sky, a ceiling.  

I walk past my dad who is in the living room

sleeping in his chair oblivious,

though marked by sin and not caring.

I walk outside across the frozen mud

to stand next to her near the gate.  

The sky is brilliant, lit up by the embers 

creating its own magical constellations. 

Against the fire, Mama looks full of light, 

yet her eyes are vacant and mimic the fire,

mimicking the cries of her lost son and his ghost. 

A single tear slowly falls down her cheek

because of gravity.

In animal silence, mud-caked Charly

stands motionless, his hooves roots,
his eyes reflecting flames instead of stars 

and the absurdity of this moment.

In starlit silence, the crow and the dove, smoke and rain,

take flight, dark and fading in the coal-black distance,

flying to a tree to bleed, songless and dreamless, now unable

to mend their nests, which they had built in the barn.

Nothing falls off her tongue.

She bleeds through the inferno.

Everything vanishes, melting away with the night.

Mama reaches out her trembling hand to hold mine,

her fingers like spines, the moon stroking her brittle bones,

her pulse faint against mine.

Her tight lips quiver, and the muscles in her neck and face 

force her painful smile that I recognize as my own.