Goodbye Sixty-nine
Like dice. Like castaways.
Like mice. Like runaways. A stripped wall. A blinded window. We were waiting to open presents. Our father was fiddling with his Bell and Howell. Our mother clucked, “Smile,” and clicked the shutter. Snapped between sprayed jungles and a murdered King, cities on fire and taped conspiracies, the Tallahatchie and the St. John’s rivers, the West Bank and a gun to the head, the boredom of rooms and the dust of the moon. Adrift on the open sea do you sink or swim? In a dust storm what’s best, future or past? Buried to your neck in dirt, where will you turn? Smile. The girls refuse; the boy offers his face. Black and white, stripped and scraped-- give us this day our gravel road, our four lane highway, our leveled field. First published in Poetry East, #61, Spring 2008 (Snapshot Issue - published with photo)
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