Poetry

Summer in The Thumb

Children are kings pillaging thin hedgerows.

Ring-necked pheasants kick up cackling,

beating the air with their golden wings.

Dandelion seeds float over rolling hills

and fall into caskets of Kentucky bluegrass.

Boys at the mudhole scoop crayfish out

from their lumpy homes. Mothers sit on the edge

of the tub to rinse and scrub clay off child feet.

Daddy’s drunk and playing with fireworks.

Across the dirt road a scraggly mutt mounts

the sheriff’s purebred. Birds perched

in the evergreens sing nesting songs.

Pickups creep by every ditch

searching for wild asparagus.

Rabbits shoot between rows of corn.

Crickets chirping in the high grass

tell you how humid it’ll be tomorrow.

Lightning bugs dangle freer than stars.

How to Tuckpoint in Warren

Crouch at the crest of the roof straddling the chimney, shift

your weight from right to left knee, brush black shingle sediment

from pits the roof digs into your knee caps. Trowel in your left hand,

scoop it into the bucket of mortar. Flick your left wrist, fluff the mortar

on the trowel, press the trowel against the brick. In your right hand is

the quarter-inch tuck pointer that glides across the trowel and packs

the three-eighths inch mortar joint between bricks. Push grey blood into

the old veins of the chimney – see mortar all around, chunks on the roof

beside you, dust covering your sunglasses. Even in your throat

you feel it. You’ve breathed it for hours. Your heart quakes against

the chimney. The thick vein in your trowel hand snakes back and forth

with fatigue. You’re too close now to take a break, close your eyes and inhale

the sweet smell of fresh wet mortar. Your cell phone plays Zeppelin through

the stereo below. The thundering drum track of In My Time Of Dying echoes

off the brick. Children stop to listen from the street. You turn but they don’t wave.

When Paul rounds the corner of his house carrying an old paint-covered ladder

and insists on helping – turn down the music and talk about the Tigers.

He has the same Al Kaline stories as your grandfather. Tell him about 1998

at old Tiger Stadium when you baked in the sun while Jose Conseco

and Cecil Fielder hit four homeruns. Paul knocks over a chunk of broken brick

and cracks your phone. He apologizes, but you’re too exhausted to care.

Finish the job without another word. At the spigot, wash your arms and face,

bucket and tools. Grab a paper towel and blow mortar out of your nose.

At the picnic table pick up your phone, run a thumb over its shattered screen.

When glass catches and rips your skin, extend a hand to Paul as blood

drips down your wrist. When he smirks and says, What? You want a bandaid?

Suck the blood off your thumb and give him the finger.

Cousin Eddie

Eddie died looking to the sun

with his eyes closed, his thumb

curled over a trigger, a shotgun

barrel underneath his chin. Eddie died

at the fishing spot we went to as children,

across from a house he’d built

with my old man, at the dead end

of a dirt road, when the river was low

and no fish would come.

I was working midnights when Eddie died,

I was sleeping half a mile away. That morning

he’d gone to eat with his parents. He’d asked

his mother to put the gun in his hands.

Eddie died hugging his father’s Remington.

The last sound Eddie heard was the Belle River.

He died with the smell of mud

in his nose. His body fell

into a casket of clover

along the river bank. Eddie died

carrying the grief of his brother

Jimmy who drowned fishing

Lake Superior. Eddie died after

apologizing to his oldest son. He died

after my old man quit returning his calls.

When Eddie died my old man’s eyes rippled

like still water struck by a stone.

When Eddie died there wasn’t money

for a funeral, so we gathered around

taps at Klugg’s Pub. It’d been a year

since I’d seen him. I was scared

I didn’t know him. When Eddie died

I saw how little everyone else knew.

His youngest son was just an infant.

I walked beside his oldest son

to the Lions Park where we sat down

on pine needles in the shade

and it was sunny that day

not a cloud in the sky

and I thought of Ray Charles singing

moonlight through the pines

and it started raining a cold rain,

steam rose off the pavement

and I stood in the center

of the playground with raindrops

ricocheting off my head

and his son stood close to me

as the rain was pouring down

and I held him and his eyes

looked so much like his father’s

and for a moment I imagined

Eddie’s body floating

neck deep in river water.

I Don’t Know What Animal I Am

I go to the Belle River naked

and hungry, stick my hands in

shallow pools and watch minnows

whisk away. My mother is sleeping

in mud beneath this river. My father

is a tree choked in poison oak.

It’s the wrong season for birds

to flock to these waters. Sunlight

ripples me as I swim. I don’t know

what animal I am. I don’t sing

like how deer don’t sing. I follow

cattails, creek beds, hedgerows, grunting

and stomping, then arrive at the flat rock

where cousin Eddie sat to dip his toes.

I know he looked up that morning

and kissed the sky with both eyes.

I know I’ll never be alone as long as I remember

this place at the bend in the riverbank. My heart

is a puddle I can’t see through.

My water flashes. It shines.

Letters to Eddie

I.

Remember the Davison highschool clusterfuck–

old man Kegler, that ballbusting geriatric, as our foreman.

Humid July mornings on the east side

filling 12-inch block walls full of grout, churning

batch after batch – sand, water, concrete mix spinning

in the house of the rising sun. Had to kick you off

the mixer one morning, you were heat stroking out.

I sent you back to the truck, found you collapsed on the front seat,

dragged you into the shade, got some ice on your head

and replaced your cigarette with a blue Gatorade.

You worked too hard, cousin.

I never understood what you were trying to prove.

Eight months after you shot yourself,

Artie’s kid found him slumped over with a needle in his arm.

Three months after that Kegler pulled off Gratiot Ave,

had the big one, coughed guts all over his steering wheel.

Half our crew was dead within eighteen months

of us pulling off that highschool lot.

I don’t remember our last day on that job.

I don’t miss cinder block or scaffold, sweat, sunburn, bloody fingers or chapped ass.

I do remember the buckshot holes in road signs we’d pass

every morning on our way in. I remember songs you put on

the stereo, the sound your seat belt made flapping against the wind.

II.

My old man collapsed in the kitchen when we got the call.

I picked him up off the floor, carried him to his bedroom

and held him until he got his head on straight.

He left me alone to tell the rest of the family that you’d shot yourself.

Which I did. I wasn’t ever ashamed of you Eddie.

It was hard in Klugg’s Pub at your funeral, listening to people

huddled around split-leather barstools saying nobody

could’ve seen it coming – that you did it to yourself.

For years I dreamed about that barroom – creaking floor boards,

sticky table tops, condensation on the taps – I’d wake in a sweat

reaching for my phone, looking for a message from you that wasn’t there.

III.

I held your cold hand at the morgue, traced my finger

along the Detroit Tigers tattoo on your forearm. I didn’t lift

the sheet up. I didn’t want to see my cousin’s ruined face.

IV.

Northbound on I-94 – everybody’s in a hurry except me.

I’ll head to the golf course later for drinks, shoot for

an evening with Janey, roll our toes back at her place, tell stories

and sing songs. In the morning when all the weed’s been smoked,

after we hop in the shower and scrub the sin off each other’s parts,

we’ll walk outside into summer onto her gravel drive

where small rocks stick in the grooves of my work boots.

Blue jays will squawk in the hedgerow, the neighbor’s dog’ll rattle

his chain link kennel. Nothing better than a goodbye kiss,

standing next to my red ‘98 Ranger, getting one last taste of her tongue.

I’ll roll down dirt roads on my way home, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid

spinning in my tape deck, pickup bouncing past soybean fields.

I’ll hear the steel cement stakes in the back bed clang each other

and remember every hammer stroke when we were framing Ed’s driveway.

When I pull in, Dad’ll be in a lawn chair drinking cans of Busch Light.

I’ll walk past, sit down on the zero turn, pull Uncle Bill’s old Zippo lighter

from my shirt pocket and use it to light up a citrus flavored gas station cigar.

There’s about eight acres that need mowing. I’ll hit the longest straight away

on the property, push the mower as fast as it’ll go down the path that reaches

the Belle River banks. Not too far from the family fishing spot

where you shot yourself. Same place I landed my first fish

then ended up with a barbed hook in my eyebrow.

V.

Our old neighbor Trudy was the one who put the call in

to the cops. She recognized your car parked

at the dead end, heard the shot echo down the river bank.

VI.

No gloves, hands raw and bleeding, gripping a board

with my right hand, wrenching that son of a bitch off its joist–

my old man didn’t respect me until I started working this way.

Baby brother follows behind me with my claw hammer

taking care of rusty nails. This is how he learns about his family–

I’m the one who still talks about the old days.

I tell him about Summer 2014 when we worked eighteen days straight,

how Dad’s company couldn’t afford overtime so we got two checks

a week. How in the morning we’d drive a nail between the battery

post and the cable to get the SkyTrak to turn over. That time

your old lady showed up on a drunk, took your work boots

so you finished the job in your socks. I don’t tell

my brother that the Led Zeppelin album I put on the stereo

is the same one me and you listened to on our way

back to Capac the last day we ever worked together.

Up the road there’s an eight-pointer still in the velvet sneaking

along the hedgerow. I point to show little brother,

but he’s already dozing off in the passenger seat.

His head leaned against the door, open window blowing

in his face, sleeping just the way you used to.

VI.

Cousin, I wrecked my voice grieving you. Hollered

into my steering wheel driving to work alone

until my throat cracked. Eight months I went without singing

a single note, my mouth made only thin wisps of breath.

After the thaw I slipped

down moss-covered stairs,

busted the back of my head on concrete pavers,

laid there looking at the sky.

I remembered us as kids singing in the backseat of grandpa’s Plymouth.

The road is rough and rocky before we get to heaven,

lord I feel like crying all the time – I sang that verse over and over.

My voice didn’t sound the way it used to, but I could sing again.

I started writing. First thing I put to paper was a letter

to your mother. She was broken to pieces.

When you pulled that trigger all our heads split open,

we spilled out of ourselves all over the place.

It’s August now and I’m thinking about your laughter

and your voice – what I’ll forget as more years pass.

I sit alone on the edge of my bed, strumming my guitar

and singing songs we used to sing. You taught me to play. Now

I’ll fill this room with music until there’s enough

of you Eddie to wrap my arms around.