A green-thumbed thinker,
my father sprouted joy
by talking about the petal numbers, the seed shapes and the leaf patterns.
A green-thumbed thinker,
his books grew by the Laz-E-Boy
and on the shelves. They ripened when I reached for them
and fell into the holes I inherited.
For years, our conversations
only budded in my head. The leaves soon turned.
The words evolved
then crawled under and over, every sharp letter,
on the boy webbed in the corners, often cut down to shatter.
My mother had wrapped herself
in a study schedule and arms of gossamer men:
a divorced student, counseling the dying,
but denying her little fly was rotting.
Her nights caught her on the couch
she was breathing and tangled with closed eyes.
In my bed, the quite pills kept me awake with loud, gnashing fangs.
After rolling in sticky sleep,
the mornings with a stove-fan dawn
made the tangles shine into the shape of a family.
His neatly folded, tent napkins,
and country clubs were not made for tumble-over boys.
Under the table, my hands would creep into guitar chords on my trouser legs.
His four star, diamond parade–
her origins. Barb’s purse had thick strings.
She only cut him from the twine when he reached for me.
My second wife:
her first strings felt like warm palms
blanketing my cold-flushed cheeks in my first, single winter.
My soft Melissa,
as strong as a fly could walk on,
covered our homes with alphabetical, book shelves,
spread-sheet shopping lists,
and scheduled sex.
In our mornings,
I fell loosely out of bed,
into the cramped study,
spinning songs,
while her eight eyes saw past that room,
weaving a plan without me.
When she asked me to leave her nest
my original corners, still frosted in brittle silk
found me stuck in my mother’s house with a dying mind.
My heart-cage shaking
and hinging its door over the spanning shadows,
my footsteps echo its swinging rhythm,
walking on bitten and bleeding soles.
Copyright 2009
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Garrett J. Cummins 