Blame’s got little to do
with how he proves his mettle
tonight in the back parking lot
of the Holiday Inn.  It’s not the pot,
his exhausted parents, the sagging small
town on the brink.  Stark prospects alone
can’t say what praise and only praise knows:
his obeisance stoked by the jumpy gods
to seethe by day and drag the night.
In stacks and frayed bell-bottomed denim
he ducks behind the rear
bumper of a ’73 Cadillac Coupe Deville:
chrome rocker molding; soft Ray
tinted glass—the same late model and make
his father vowed just last week
he’d one day bygod own.

In the moonlight a green garden
hose stems out and over the Caddy’s Ohio plates.
Down to his knees, he sucks
hard in the hope this time
he won’t swallow—and prays,
lit lanky in the blessed heat of mine and take,
prays it’ll all be better, prays pray for me:
praise, praise his sky-blue bug on full,
praise the lucent June night,
praise Cherry Street stoplight by stoplight,
praise stolen looks at girls
he’d never dare ask out,
praise Big Star in his ear,
high test in his throat, the scent
of gasoline everywhere
dripping stout from his hands.

This poem was previously published at Valparaiso Poetry Review (Fall/Winter 2014-2015 Volume XVI, Number 1).

The summer our knack
for Kick the Can arcs to Spin the Bottle,
we rush supper to fling ourselves
into orbit with Angela and her sisters.
Delight declares itself in the rank Delta night,
draws us out after dark to that lit knoll
beneath the streetlight, where we vie
with the prior whir and winged havoc
of beetle, mosquito and moth.
We tease and pick the mown
grass, damp already with July’s early dewfall.
It grabs hold at the ankles, clings
to bare feet, shinnies up tanned legs
and skirts under the fringe of cut-off blue jeans.

We pluck the green stems of Bermuda,
lift them slender to our lips
like our parents’ forbidden cigarettes,
slip dandelion barrettes into the tropical smell
of long hair, shiny with Sun In and Prell.

It still takes a game.
By turns, the Coke bottle spins and stops.
Points. Permits our closing in
out of the light and back
behind the blue hydrangeas.

Later, we say to the girls, as we take off.
Later, to our longings so sated for now.
Later, to the play of our regal nights,
the braiding of clover into crowns,
careful for now always
to wear them blossom-side out.

“Later” was previously published in Deep South Magazine on September 5, 2014.

My eyes grow weary with gazing upward. —Isaiah 38:14

            ~I~

“We don’t get out much anymore.”
That’s how she puts it, trying
to swat a fly and finish telling 

her pastor why her Coley
keeps holed up in his shop
out back with this hankering 

to put life in a headlock
and squeeze until there’s a pop
and blood from the nose, 

why there’s no more church,
not with those Holy Rollers
leapfrogging in tongues to impress. 

God? Sure, but even so.
“His knees ain’t what
they used to be.” 

I nod. Either way,
amen. I stand
too soon to leave. 

She knows, so says,
“Don’t take it personal, Preacher.
He’s always been determined. 

He just sits out there and sharpens
saw blades all day. I swear, he’s done
rolled up his life with his sleeves.”

The dry breeze carries her words from the porch
over my shoulder toward the arid, alligatored fields,
green stalks low for July, their level best 

given the little rain we’ve had.
She can’t stand to see Coley’s rawboned head
spend itself bent 

over a wheel of sparks
spraying into nothing.
The edge he sets 

I can see. Safe in my car,
backing out, I manage
a smile as she waves. 

~II~

Time was, a church potluck
one early May saw Coley hunkered
obeisant with the rest of the men 

on his heels beneath the big elm.
He sized up the bottomland on all sides, the dark
gumbo muck, furrowed and flat and lying in wait, 

till a grin cracked loose from his head:
“Like they say, ‘You stick with it all summer,
and it’ll stick to you come winter.’” 

We laughed as he rose, not knowing
where the Spirit goes, that he was about
done and sure to get shed of us.

In memory of Tom Logue

One day Tom and Ethel dropped
their baby Louise by Ethel’s brother’s
while driving through Tennessee.
Making their way back to I-40,
Pastor Tom saw a road sign
for two nearby towns: 

Difficult 2
Defeated 4 

Being a Baptist, he knew
without ever visiting that
somewhere there was bound to be
a Difficult Baptist Church,
a Defeated Baptist Church.
He’d seen both,
and being young, smart,
and in love with all things ironic,
he smiled and drove on. 

That was before muscular dystrophy
claimed his oldest son Tommy at 18,
before schizophrenia came to horde out
his youngest son John,
before Tom found how little
give there was to grief. 

He lost his appetite over time
for the cake of gloat and smirk,
came to chew on wonder’s crust:
Does anyone ever move
from Defeated to Difficult? 
Or from Difficult to Defeated? 

Either way it’s only two miles.
Though both places seemed a thousand miles
from nowhere, he came to know, sure as the world,
he’d be a goner in Defeated,
but in Difficult, there he could make it:
He’d vote in every election,
sweep its streets, paint its fences.