After birth, a man scrapes a sharpened stone edge
against an umbilical cord until it snaps,
stretches its Wharton’s jelly over a boulder
to crisp in the sun, soaks it in a stream, feasts
to protect child-bearing neighbors’ wombs;
after Romulus kills Remus and rules a city bereft of women,
white-foamed Mediterranean waves
crash into oar-driven warships’ flaming hulls,
roll over sand banks and stab pink granite walls,
brothers in Christ hang like coarse wet tunics
over concrete walls circling the flowered hortus;
after Darwin stumbles upon the Galápagos Islands,
finds mockingbirds with long beaks pointed at tips like icicles,
white crescent moon stripes floating on wings,
nighttime streaking across breasts to distinguish
themselves from South American relatives;
after a world war, a president hides his voice
behind crisscrossed wires, speaks beside fires
as if sipping tea, rocks in a chair
between talking points about service,
sacrifice, the enemy, trying times that leave
limbless children strewn across bloodied curbs
like a Welcome Home parade’s confetti;
after Anita Bryant sings of imitation love - Paper Roses that burn forever in hell, petal by petal -
saves our children from prostitutes,
sleeping with St. Bernards and nail biting,
delivers America to Providence in a dress and makeup;
after a number at
the bakery,
a preferred customer card
swipes through Earth’s crevices,
staring at stars, wondering where we are,
countless thoughtless breaths – there is this:
an old woman,
thin white hair poking through red strands
of a hand-knit hat, fixes a loving gaze at the man across the table
(the boy who took her for ice cream on a nervous first date
fifty years ago. She ordered a small scoop that night, stomach hidden
inside a corset, back straight and smooth legs crossed).
Plump and comfortable, she hunches over the table,
waits for steak and mashed potatoes with thick gravy.
Hiding behind her menu, she slides the wrapper to the end of her straw,
puts it to her lips, blows the paper at her lover. It strikes his cheek
like their cautious first kiss. She smiles, tries not to laugh,
and he smiles back. I do nothing more than see it,
and nothing ever mattered more.
What
They Missed
No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed
something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it
all.
~ Chuck Palahnuik
I used to think Death waited with brash assurance
at the end of a hall, behind a swinging saloon door,
rested his rotund body on a plush bar stool,
pounded a dull knife and fork on the counter,
belly swelling over a brass belt buckle as he anticipated
the next round of raw supper, rolling in like tumbleweeds.
With age, he shifted to a gently gliding farmhouse rocker,
white suit, corn cob pipe between lips, Faulkner novel,
wishing for an allergy to sweat, new teeth.
But now that I’m old and close, I see her – low cut jeans, crow’s nest hair
wound in knots and waves, lounging in eternity’s café
for the chance to complain about the boyfriend who left her.
She thumbs through a blank issue of Vogue, waits, sighs,
exasperated at high-pitched baby cries
and mothers who plead to keep their children alive.
All they do is whine about what they missed:
Nephew’s baptism, Phish’s farewell tour,
chance to say goodbye to so-and-so. Blah, blah, blah.
She’s grown
weary of this sobbing sort of love,
saltwater collecting in deep concrete pools, reflecting
the bare fluorescent light above her table.
When my time comes, I won’t beg,
won’t pull my hair in panic with shuddering hands –
Death will cross her arms, scoff at such unusual behavior.
I’ll smile, recall the day before my father’s heart stopped beating,
listening to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan the morning the war was over,
oak fire breathing scented smoke, no beginning, no end,
a lover’s kiss on my lips
lit by moon and constellation,
and seaweed, blue-green under water and sun.
Bio: Austin Kodra lives with his family in Knoxville, TN, and
studies English with a focus in Creative Writing at the University of
Tennessee.
