The Soldier
On the playground he pushed me down
then grasped my hand to pull me up—
my little earthmover, starshaker, helmeted
hairtrigger whose fingers laced tight in mine
when his stepdad came home early and we hid
with our noses touching beneath his bellowed bed
we played Jesus and Pontius, took turns as prodding
Thomas, our fingers searching out tender tears
my little atheist, gladiate giftgiver and tidetaker,
thumbscrewed softbellied tough guy tumbling
to take the box of matches when we played Joan of Arc,
singeing my braids, putting them out in his mouth, now you
be the executioner I heard he died in a sandstorm
but that was rumor for he was swordbreaker
soapboxer chaser of afterwinds anointer of wicked
women I still touch the scar where he wondered
what do you look like under all that skin my little bottlehead
whose throat had no chokepoint even after so many pulls
and pills I can still hear him singing
chewing a cigarette between his teeth
come on baby light
the fire
The Sailor
We tangle until the back of my head
is bruised and my hair so knotted
it takes years to comb out
He tells me canary is a beautiful woman
crow is an ugly woman seagull is a slut
who follows the fleet
from port to port
I think I am albatross
but he says you are hummingbird
flighty, drinking only red sugar
water, on my eighth Cape Cod
and counting This old boat of a bed
is a furling following sea and we bob
and bow and breathe into each other,
drink listless and lilting, mooring
our bodies to shores that turn turtle
He weaves the knot of shipwrecked men,
clean simple panic I am a swell that breaks
against the rigging, teeth that tear the tide
He makes another joke about birds
He shuts tight a fated bolt at my back
as a lighthouse beam passes black
over my face, sucks clean the stars
He uses a fish hook’s spine to cut me
loose, whispers how many the fictitious shores
before the harbor
lie
*from Emily Dickinson’s LXXIII
The Trucker
my knight in shining six-hundred
horsepower teamster trickster
teeth like stars
eyes like match-strike the cab
of your truck was catapult
combustion chamber flying
onward we outran your dead
wife my arsoned vows
your hand hot on the clutch
my strutting spark plug storyteller
shimmering mesa lakes so bright
the miles of your voice
so blue rolling out behind us
our road summer
following yellow lines blind
& narrow an unmapping
outside of Amarillo a witch hat
blew across our path end over end
caught in the headlights
box-shaped tinge of black
on the side of a Reno road
remnant of a car gone up
in flames in middle
America I mourned
thousands of raccoons little claws
curled to the sky flattened hawks
one wing pointed up fluttering
the flying nest of your truck
where intermittent we ached
brimming the broken bodies
rolling out behind us
***
Photograph of Alysse McCanna by Mukund Ram Gopalakrishnan.
