[7]

The beach gives onlookers, men with poles. I am just trying to jog

this beach, if I yelled you fucking voyeur it would not be got. I liken

myself to Faulkner's going on about nature while being sharp

with the two characters of this working—you know, & God always God

let's call him Higher Power the way the Al-Anon book says.

In the past you were shot at, mid-hand dealt as if shuffle inward yet

leave it alone. I drink a Mich Ultra, that's what in the fridge. And

slow to the gunny, the time spent I drug myself by belly, slept

when the sun came up, my hands back again. A picture

of you, ain't it funny, in the bar forever, my good tap tap, fingers

& feet now I've no speedrack, five hundred bottles a night, two

in each hand & this is Heaven. But your hands in my hair,

a periodic newness for remembrance which like a shrug dully evokes

the winter coming. I have my graces from which

I carry the sun to violence all my mistakes, born into thick hands,

cruelty & choose so. If I curl my hair I'm taking on the town,

the real of the town, everyone with their beer whiskey hands all sad

behind their beer whiskey hands, you cannot run it down—pilé & shade

from any ray that looks you step right because right cannot tell

the difference between a marsh & a swamp: we kill both. I thought

Jo home again & it was murky, the sea unfledged, myself

in the backyard watching closely the cats

don't jump the fence & get out there on the road.

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Copyright © 2011 Shelly Taylor All rights reserved
from Black Warrior Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission