Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Eighteen
Winter 2008
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While Cupping an Apology in My Hands, a Voice from in back of Me Asks “Whatcha Got There Little Man”
               —for Phyllis and Tamara Ann

Aaron Patrick Flanagan

Somewhere, a tree across a creek, a door in a story of dogwood petals for you.
Because of you I am constructing a headboard of backbones from bamboo.
For you, I am coating a box kite with alluvium, securing it to a tomato stake in our
           garden.



Somewhere mother, eluvium is refusing its position in genealogy. Oh yeah, I’m filling
           tiny porcelain jewel boxes with worry dolls.
I’m sculpting them a wardrobe from oak, filling it with Granny Smith apple skin skirts,
           thin ginger shavings for slips, clipped lengths of silk thread for hair ribbons. I’ve
           included a note, which holds a secret meant only for you two: I purposely ruined



the community picnic. I fondled all the deviled eggs, and I filled every pie with apples
           of Peru. Mom, she’ll witness none of it.
These gifts will not be gifted unto her. The kite will never fly, and I’ll be gone. Gone. So
           you know though, just beyond Clendenin
there’s a patch of tall field grass you may lie in, and there’s only one way out and in.

About Aaron Patrick Flanagan

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