*Featured image courtesy of Kie-ker on Unsplash*
A Grove Near Maggie Daley Park
Don’t dream the day is still in front of us.
all light in the grove;
dead grass like sand all over the threadbare grounds, this
hollowed clearing in the urban forest,
ancient orchard obstructs the concrete sky.
The Man who sits across the grounds has hands like a prophet,
they are massive and awash in sunlight.
twice,
He kneels down into the sandpaper grass,
throws His hands together toward the sky,
and cries out.
begs.
wails.
my shoulders shake out of reverence or fear.
twice,
He resumes reading when there is no apparent answer,
licks His thumb and turns the page with a grin I am trying to stomach.
my bare feet hold the dirt in some old form of offering.
it occurs to me I ought to try my luck.
this place is as good as any, and, in any event,
you may always come back from a place that calls you home.
The Man with prophet hands smiles and nods his great and abundant hand
when I return to where I once sat.
don’t dream, He says,
the day is still in front of us.
His palms are so full of light they are eating away at the sky.
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On Friday we wear tie-dye t-shirts and put my 5th grader into handcuffs.
3rd block is wrapping their mouths around new five letter words, just starting chapter 5.
An hour later,
I am seated next to the boy while the officer peels the metal rings from his wrists.
Sometimes at lunch my students will get up from their seats,
perform dances they borrow from video games or internet videos;
rectangular slabs of pizza dangling from their hands, drinking juice from plastic cups.
Today, they argue over the football game and who leads our line from recess.
Today, his father arrives to see his son wound in metal.
I am out of breath, somewhere in the old man’s embrace before I can uproot
any of the words he is due.
Before I can make any amount of offering.
Before we leave, I must close the blinds in my classroom and gather my lunch,
tomorrow, I suspect, we will finish chapter 5.
I ground a heel in the carpet and close the door.
When The Rain Comes
When the rain comes, it
comes in droves like armies.
When the rain comes, it
hangs over the gutter like hunger.
When the rain comes, it
drowns the birds like cannon-fire.
We catch it in tin buckets
becomes like lazy rivers for the wilted bodies of ants running through its abscess.
Once the evening comes and the rain does not subside,
the buckets overflow and expel strange rivulets through the cracks in our side wall
so the cellar walls ooze the outside
until the floorboards are slick with a thin layer of dew.
When the rain comes, my great grandfather’s knees crack like old bedroom doors:
“It smells like the sky erased”
he tells me from the corner of his mouth, eyes outside
like the sky is still there for the taking.
I wonder what it feels like to think brilliant things.
My great-grandfather was brilliant and did not read classic Russian authors,
or copy Whitman poems by hand into sandpaper notebooks.
Instead, he knew the world as the world is–
I know it as it was written, as it happens through another’s eyes.
Tomorrow the rain will stop,
the emaciated cat with sharp yellow eyes will come back,
to sleep on the concrete drive like a nomad.
For now, it’s time to ascend the wooden steps toward
the sound of heavy raindrops on the roof
and wash my hands of the old man’s ghost.
Michael is twenty-three, a teacher, and living in Nashville, Tennessee. Aside from writing, you can find him running, making coffee, or taking Junie the dog for a walk around town. His writing page is @sullivan.writes on Instagram.
