~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Larry D. Thomas

Mount Nebo, Arkansas

(for “Drew,” fiction writer)

When, on Sunrise Point,

at the cliff’s edge,

you leaned into the wind,

I thought you were

going to jump, mistaking

your Windbreaker

for a hang glider.

As your jacket flapped,

I heard the crack

your Dad’s fist made

breaking the bridge

of your nose, the baritone

resolve of your voice

telling him you’d kill him

if he struck you again.

He made you a man

that day, years before

you even finished growing.

I’m sure that night,

without knowing it,

your broken face aglow

with the unrelenting coals

of tragedy, you forged

your first prose, hammering

that punch of cowardice

into the lasting,

unforgiving strength

of fictive iron.

Blue Jay

Out of nowhere,

as if a swatch

of scoured

October sky,

it tore

into the flames

of the pyracantha,

and perched

between thorns

in a wedge

of sunlight.

I’d never

seen blue

so blue,

blue as blood

run cold,

blue as,

silent

in the cool,

spectral

plastic of a

compact disk,

a riff

of Stevie Ray.

The Shuckers

Their gloved, slimy hands

grope in the dark

folds of tow sacks

till they find them

encrusted with barnacles

sharp as the blades of razors.

They ease them to the light.

With lightning speed

and but a twist

of their knife blades,

they pry the leathery

ligaments, lay wide open

the shells, and with a deft

scrape of their blades,

loosen muscle from nacre,

making of the oysters’ homes

their pearl-lined,

open caskets.

Larry D. Thomas, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, has published twenty-three print collections of poetry, the most recent of which is In a Field of Cotton: Mississippi River Delta Poems. Of Southern heritage, he has recent poems in the Arkansas Review, Deep South Magazine, Delta Poetry Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Louisiana Literature, Valley Voices, and elsewhere. His website is www.larrydthomas.com. Email: buffalonm@comcast.net