Tilted
head, right arm
behind the back, fingers
curled around the left arm’s inner
elbow
as if
holding her own
soft self together, or
taking her own pulse. Skin. Clouds.
Braces.
Smiling
on a French road,
seventeen, a year before
her death. Tilted head angling
toward
some blue
corner of the sky,
patched with white clouds, thin
line of skin between shirt and jeans,
hips wide
as if
having given
birth already, tilted
hips, and, beside them, dangling, her
left hand
open
fingers stretching
upward, as if holding
the warm day delicately
open.
J.D. Scrimgeour is the author of the poetry collections The Last Miles and Territories, and he won the AWP Award for Nonfiction for Themes For English B: A Professor’s Education In & Out of Class. With musician Philip Swanson he released Ogunquit & Other Works, a CD blending music and poetry. His third poetry collection, Lifting the Turtle (Turning Point), will appear in November 2017.
the patterns do not change __ __ __ __
they are misremembered __ __ __ __
cool hand __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
separate heat __ __ __ __ __ __
Be gentle don’t bump it I’ve got Andromeda centered
In the viewfinder but it will already have shifted slightly
Gliding its trillion stars and their moons in millimeters
Behind the local legends painted ancient on the dome
but ask me again how much
I care about the other mouths
that could call my name.
We’d get home, and he’d go back to weaseling money out of Mom
and squandering it on things that were smokable or fit in a syringe,
on what wasn’t bread. The little money he made came from
selling our family’s things: Mom’s jewelry, TV and VCR
swallows actin’ drunk
swimmin’ overhead
chasin’ each other ‘round
like brand new lovers
stumblin’ out the bar at 2 am
I command subjects, turn math to English, history
to lunch, govern teachers and students alike in
my slow crawl through middle and high school
periods.
We are all God’s little playthings. Or else why are we on a ball.
I had the goods,
the lowdown, the skinny,
the whole truth
and nothing but.
I was dangerously
in the know.
If you listen, really listen, their voices come back.
They start to tell you about places you’ve
never been, about things you want with
a ferocity that scares you sometimes. They make
sense. Sit with them on the couch and watch
a movie you know is bad.
Only connect
indeed. Dressed and buckled in
like chefs or psychiatric patients,
they shuffle and lunge.