Poetry, Fiction, and More

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  A Superannuated Wilfred Brimley

He appears on t. v., hawking life
insurance, while I am left to wonder why
this erstwhile baseball coach and cuddly
grandpa keeps up the quest for cash
when residual checks from Cocoon
and whatever baseball film he did
(I have heard Costner speak of these)
arrive like a kind nurse’s knock
upon his beachfront condo door.

Is it that he adopted a child
at seventy, believing the boy to be
the character who works two jobs
so his father can watch him do
the tassled walk across a college campus,
with everyone teary-eyed, applauding the sight
of the old mine worker’s walrus smile,
seeing now why his son disappeared
those many nights, not to abuse the drugs
he suspected (and of which Wilfred’s lad
is so fond), but to gift his father
the long-held family dream of success
and of everything it breeds? 



A Coyote is Not Like a Wolf

Just as gray but prone to sleep
as his cousin schemes, he lies
in brush as you tread by,
startled to his feet only then,
and with a glance, trots away
through dead leaves, as pages of
a legend in which he stands
at this safe distance, breaking
for the hero you never were
the code of lupine ease,
ferocity only when approached
or, as with wolves, in a pack
convened to help him down
and tear apart his prey.

He watches as you pray
to him, for him, for every anima
who isn’t here to see these
seconds of détente, those
tips of canines visible enough
and ears pricked up for the sound
he hears as wolf call
as you hear pebble crunch
and gusts as the sounds
of all the other woods you’ve walked,
hoping to become like him,
feral enough to drowse in the brush,
solitary save for hunting,
but intrigued by another
creature, half-civilized and alone.



    A & W

They made the breaded mushrooms
roadside, big bags of them like
piecemeal promises of fullness
in a five year-old’s greasy hands,
on the way, I think now,
from our suburb to
a country playhouse
where the first large world
would always devour me.

from
the 2009 Pushcart Prize-nominated story
"Rome"
(J Journal 1.1 (2008))


Brooklyn. New York City. Everything and nothing. Here was this kid, probably some businessman’s or shop-owner’s son, crippled and on his way to jail, and for what? Was he freeing the blacks? Was he stopping the war? Alfie understood now what his father knew, why he spent so much time in bars, or out hunting, always changing jobs. Nobody was free. Whoever built these buildings would still run things. You could work for them or against them. You could stay in the city or you could leave. Where were you gonna find peace? Wiesniewski would have kids, and then he’d be right next to Alfie, maybe with a little bigger house, in a neighborhood or town with not so many skells. Maybe the only difference was how far you traveled to reach the woods.            

He grabbed Wiesniewski’s arms and twisted them around his back, snapped on the cuffs. The kids around them noticed, and turned on Alfie.            

“Fascists!”           

 “Police brutality!”           

 “Cop thugs, go home!”            

Where the fuck was Sweeney?            

Suddenly water was dripping on Alfie’s head. He pulled Wiesniewski a step away from the wall and looked up. He spotted Sanders and Lundstrem leaning out of a second-story window, mid-spit. Down the building a little ways, in the next window, he spotted Sweeney.            

“Can’t get at ‘em down there. Door’s blocked,” his partner yelled. “You all right?”            

He raised an open palm, to say everything was all right.            

In the meantime, Alfie saw Lundstrem climbing out on the ledge. The mob below cheered as he got to his feet.            

“Your baton” Sweeney called, pointing to a spot in front of where Alfie stood, “you’re gonna need it.”            

Carefully, carefully, Alfie moved forward again. One hand still on Wiesniewski, he bent over to pick the weapon up.            

“Yeeee-haaah!” someone yelled, the sound Dopplering.            

Then he felt the weight of a hundred trees fall on his back, his legs shoot out from under him, his face slam against the concrete. For a minute, black swirls and distant chords behind his eyelids, then red, then almost light, then a body next to his: Lundstrem, his limbs dancing in pain, hands grabbing at the bone protruding from his leg. Alfie tried reaching for him, but couldn’t move. Not an arm, not a muscle.