Photo: "Boathouse Window" David Graham
Give Me Toast and More Toast
A man calling his wife mother,
the son calling his rifle friend,
and a ginger cat calling the porch
its creaking footfall roof. It could be
1964 and the sun sizzles like a sparkler
two weeks before 4th of July.
Give me dust and more dust,
let it settle everywhere. Give me
glass pitchers of sweet cane tea
and porch swing cushions
slipcovered with buttercup daisies.
Cicadas climbing trees to chainsaw
distant thunderheads,and the son
there too on the lawn staring back
at the whitewashed house, counting
how many blues skies still remain
in the windows. Give me light
and more light. Even after dark,
blanket on the lawn, fill the sky
with the smallest pieces of it.
A man calling his wife mother,
the son calling his rifle friend,
and a ginger cat calling the porch
its creaking footfall roof. It could be
1964 and the sun sizzles like a sparkler
two weeks before 4th of July.
Give me dust and more dust,
let it settle everywhere. Give me
glass pitchers of sweet cane tea
and porch swing cushions
slipcovered with buttercup daisies.
Cicadas climbing trees to chainsaw
distant thunderheads,and the son
there too on the lawn staring back
at the whitewashed house, counting
how many blues skies still remain
in the windows. Give me light
and more light. Even after dark,
blanket on the lawn, fill the sky
with the smallest pieces of it.
--Brent Goodman is the author of Far From Sudden (2012 Black Lawrence Press), The Brother Swimming Beneath Me (2009 Black Lawrence Press), and two chapbooks, Trees are the Slowest Rivers ( Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press), and Wrong Horoscope (Thorngate Road), which won the Frank O’Hara Award. His work has been featured in Poetry, Diagram, No Tell Motel, Court Green, Rattle, Poetry East, Green Mountains Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and Zone 3, among others. He is a poetry instructor in the Dzanc Sessions Online Writing Workshops and an assistant editor for the online journal Anti-.
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