~ Delta Poetry Review ~

C. L. Bledsoe

Summer

We woke early, my father to sip coffee

in the kitchen while reading his spy

thrillers; me, to watch Bullwinkle cartoons

and drink my milk after the cereal

was gone. I can still hear his loud slurp,

shattering the morning stillness

as the sun heated up the gray outside.

His truck, who knows what color

it once was, now gray and brown with

dust, a radio playing mostly static;

we drove down to the shed

where he’d stack fifty-pound bags

of fish feed in a steady metronome

of thuds while I struggled to drag one

to the back of the truck. My father, silent

as dust while I asked my embarrassed

questions. The stock pond was buzzing

with light. We dribbled feed over the side

as dad navigated a long arc around the lake.

Bugs danced on the surface. Sometimes,

a fish would jump for one. He never let me

steer. Then, the long, slow drive to the fields,

the only noise the truck and detuned radio,

my father’s gaze always out of reach.

From the highway, rice fields raced by.

I’ve forgotten the sweet tang

in the air, mud and rice, mosquitoes

so thick, your bare skin becomes

one long itch. We put on rubber boots,

gathered our shovels and stacks of spills

and waded into the thing as the morning

was starting to boil. Shoveling mud

into rushing water, every inch a struggle.

Back at the truck, dad would quietly down

Budweisers and look up to the road

in case there was someone there to talk to.

When I Was Young

The days came thick, a soup like swampy air,

rife with buzzing moments. How will I divide

the hours into pure and forgotten? Whose lamp

should I follow through the toothed night?

Years of repeated questions before I asked

my own. Sadness passed from hand to hand,

savored and held sacred. So much of life

is about aching upward until the slow fall

and rest. If you narrow the eyes in anger,

you might not have to see as much of what you fear.

There were ghosts in the woods we played in.

A ghost in the bedroom, my mother’s voice

fading with dawn. It’s best to think of Sisyphus

happy, but what games did he play as a child?

They’re thinner, now, the days, slow as snow

clotting the cool grass. I can see the soil

through them, now. It won’t be much longer.

Coming Home

My brother’s wife says we should be able

to choose not to put the feeding tube in.

I remind her of how he and I would argue,

when I was a teenager in the rice fields, about

my mother’s last days. When my brother’s

body clenches into itself, she says, that

should be the end. My mother, a pile

of awkward bones, twitching on the bed

when I’d come to visit, stayed with me

for years. I couldn’t think of anything

to say. Does he moan like she did? Standing

at the door, screaming out over the pasture.

I used to hide in the bathroom, or coming home

from school, freeze at the bottom of the hill

when she was already screaming at the door.

She would say each of her children’s names

in quick succession when one of us visited

the nursing home; one of them must be right.

My brother’s wife assures me she could no

longer take care of him, though she tried. I

agree. I’ll visit my mother’s grave tomorrow.

Tell her I’m divorced now. My daughter

she never met. When I see my brother,

I’m worried most that I won’t cry, that

he’ll see in my eyes that I think he’s already

dead, that all I’ll be able to talk about

is the weather and the cost of beans.

My Childhood in Ten Apologies

1. To all the pets my father murdered,

I murdered by bringing into his house;

I wanted something that would let me love it,

and should’ve known the price was death.

2. To my father, whose dotage I encumbered

with obligation; if I’d had a choice, I would’ve

let you drink in peace.

3. To my mother, whose death I burdened

with guilt; they took you from your bed

and put you in a nursing home, when I was the one

who’d fed you, sat with you. It was my

fault, child that I was.

4. To the gray hills I trampled, the thick trees

I scraped with my scabby knees, to the placid

lake I was afraid to touch, the snakes distracted

from their haunts to chase me. I just wanted

to be free.

5. To the lowing cows, hair torn by

barbed wire fences, faces I see in my dreams,

lives spent placid until a gruesome end.

6. To the barbed wire fences whose strands

I twined together to slip through on the way

to town, left to pull free of the fence posts,

to rust in the tall grass, behind me.

7. To the walls of that red brick house, battered

and scuffed, knocked clear through in places,

covered in paste and ash, peopled by mice, spiders

roaches, whose lives I clomped through on the way

to my own.

8. To my sister, hair full of Aqua Net and bad

decisions, who tried her best to take up

the slack, who took so long to find someone

to love her right, who felt like she failed me

when she was the only one who didn’t.

9. To my brother, who shied away from life

until it was so long gone, only to have it nipped

short, in pain, who taught me to explore

when I dragged him from his room.

10. To the boy I never got to be, hiding

in the quiet for fear of being found. I’m sorry.

It’s time to come out.

Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of thirty books, including his newest poetry collection, The Bottle Episode, and his latest novel The Saviors. Bledsoe co-writes the humor blog "How to Even" with Michael Gushue: https://medium.com/@howtoeven  Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter. Email: clbledsoe@gmail.com