Beneath the Rubble

Parishioners stumbled through
the stone, plaster, glass, and brick.
Razed by veined, muscular hands,
the battered remains of the church
scattered across the earth,
spirit and edifice leveled by inquisition.
Porcelain faith splintered as the congregation wandered
among broken, mortal relics beneath the rubble.

Tightrope

A little girl,
arms outstretched for balance,
tightropes on a line
in the sidewalk,
pretending she will die if she falls off.
She does then only laughs
as her mother smiles
and claps to applaud her death.

Acts of Waiting

Characters: The boy and the man

Location: The boy's bedroom in the house

ACT I

That night as the boy sat on his bed in his dark room, he was 12 and had never waited before. Six years of hiding. This was the first time he had ever waited for the man's gravel-throated, angry sputtering, a violent din spawned from hate.

ACT II

“Goddammit,” followed by the sound of non-cadenced feet, stumbling, lurching through the side door downstairs. “Goddammit!” Three syllables, scattering the house-silence into shards of broken glass then converting it into heat. “Where is the boy? You better not make me have to look for you!”

As the boy sat waiting upstairs in the dark, he heard the man's angry slurring. “Where’s that fucking boy? I’ll find you, you son of a bitch. When I do . . .” Sitting on his bed in the dark, The boy watched the rectangle outline of the closed bedroom door haloed by the hall light.

ACT III

“Goddammit.” The bedroom door opened, pushing the hall light through the opening, immediately, without transition, filling the room with a muted, secondary yellow light. A detached hand extended into the room, molesting the wall, probing for the light switch. The man's flushed, enflamed face followed the hand. Eyes wide, waterlogged, darting without any discernable pattern, as they dismounted on the boy's unexpected face staring back at him, the rhetorical “What the fuck?” suspended between them, draped over the man's disbelief.

ACT IV

That moment, that suspended instant, their eyes converged, affixing the boy and the man to those immutable seconds. The man broke the glare and faltered, right fist raised, eyes callous, slack, intent. As the man came close, fist raised and in motion towards the boy's face, the boy grabbed the man's clinched, moving fist and pulled on it, bringing their faces within an inch of each other. The boy could smell the reek of bourbon and cigarettes on the man's warm breath as their eyes steel-bolted.

“If you ever hit me or Mama again, I’ll fucking kill you,” the boy whispered into the man's face.

The Garden

Sitting on his bed in the dark,
staring at the window overlooking the small garden
that grew blisters on his mother’s hands
during the long, humid summers.
He thought about the garden and her hands,
imagining they were connected, inextricable,
fashioning each other out of the bitterness
inside the house.

The Politician

Standing at the podium,
speaking.
Self-enthralled.
Anxious one-liners
hustled into the din.
Desirous, needy
little words,
desperate, panicky
as they
vanished nervously
into the flat,
gaped-mouth glare
of numb eyes.

Eyes

The muscled eyes of the crowd
wear steel-cleated boots
to kick aberration into place
without leaving footprints.

Waves

Sunrise.
The waves
licking the beach
then retreating.
The sands shift
beneath the backwash,
Looking for a place to rest.

Despair is Always Alone

That day, I felt death,
close and gelid.
A friend died
ramming a bullet
through her head.

Despair is always alone,
unaccompanied, hermitic.
I knew morning
was a night away.

Pieces

The ground was wet.
Today was the wake.
The storm spent,
leaving a dark, gray gunge
slung at the afternoon.
A lone bird
sketched transparent circles
in the horizon.
The church steeple punctured
the dense sky,
splintering the day
into small, rackety pieces.

Ants

She sat on a park bench near me
crushing ants with her dirty, stubby thumb.
She'd done it before.
You could tell by her smile
as she rolled tiny corpses
through a crack
to the dirt beside her feet.

Below the Graves

Subway.
Warm clammy.
Gray metal bench, empty,
waiting to be filled
like a cloudy glass tumbler,
then to pour its numb, vacant faces
into steel boxes
that travel through dank arteries
below the graves.