Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Twenty-one Winter 2009 |
Summer of Hammers and Whiskey Sara Tracey I. June Did we tear down that wall with sledge hammers or bare hands? Nights, we opened windows, sealed screens with duct tape. Morning spider webs caught only dew. A bathtub in the back yard. Later, Daddy would burn the scrap, dry-rot and tar paper, but she was gone for the day, running from the saw’s buzz and blistered fingers. I pulled nails from two by fours. The coffee can rusted and filled. I lost count. A bull frog floated in the cistern. II. July She wore a red racer back. My suit hand-me-down floral. Loose at the legs. I asked her to hold my breath while I went under. We practiced the dead man’s float, butterfly stroke. Listened to water tangling our hair. Across the drive, Queen Anne’s Lace, buttercup, bloodroot. Stained fingertips, white petals. I got lost in the woods, found black walnuts, sphagnum moss. She stretched out on the glider, slid straps off her shoulders. III. August We sat in the back seat of some boy’s Camaro, short shorts and flannel, bare bellies and toe rings. She kissed him behind the poultry barn. I rode the Scrambler, third time that day. Candy apples and kettle corn, my fingers sticky, hers jammed in his back pocket. Ferris wheel lights fading in the rearview mirror. Back home, trash bags on windows, box fans in doorways. Drywall and plywood, a carpenter’s pencil on the bathroom sink. She plastered her walls with Bushmills labels, kept a bottle under the bed. |
About Sara Tracey |