Today's poem is by Rebecca Lehmann

Train Villanelle

You've lost a penny, you've lost many, you've lost your brain.
My son traces a maze with his finger, one
leg kicking under the table to the tempo's fast train.

Leave my son out of this. Smiling boy who frames
his pictures with stickers, not yours to touch. Be done.
You've lost a penny. You've lost many. You've lost your brain

of course because you're dead, can't think, can't blame
anybody else now. Now, I want you to go,
skeleton legs running like a cartoon train.

Skeleton key in freeze frame dangling from your sprained
neck. No, broken. In the tarot deck you're upside down,
a lost penny, discarded man with sloshing brains,

your head hinged to ground, one foot flamed
to the side, untied. Delirious spectacle. An eye to thumb
shut. A punch of stars. A halo or arrow, untrained.

I flip you right side up again, spin and spin
you. I'm in control, blow and the boughs
break, like your neck, like a baby, lost, like your brain.
Like your legs twitched a slow tempo, then stopped. Then stop. Then stop this train.

Skeleton Key Villanelle

It's Rondo a Capriccio and Beethoven is angry again.
The piano pounds from the speakers, my son
kicking his legs under the table to the tempo's fast train

which speeds through the living room, fast pain
we can't catch or board, this loaded gun.
It's Rondo a Capriccio and Beethoven is angry again.

He's lost a penny, he's lost many, he's lost his brain.
My son traces a maze with his finger, one
leg kicking under the table to the tempo's fast train.

This was supposed to be a poem with a key, then
a door in which the key would slide, but then
a capricious rounding hit us: Beethoven, angry again.

A rusty iron skeleton key might weigh down
a small boy's pocket. We race the sun,
legs hitching to catch the tempo's fast train.

The music lifts us, a son, a mother. Someone
better close the drapes. We trapse—outrun.
It's Rondo a Capriccio and Beethoven is angry again,
beating each note like an impossible train.

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Copyright © 2024 Rebecca Lehmann All rights reserved
from Bennington Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission