"Porch" by Richard Schlecht

It was all bricked up, but I had to look.
Under the hat of the porch
where the swing caved into the rust,
I pulled each stone,
light as hair on nervous skin.
Winced and teared but knew
some score was waiting there --
harps a thumb refused to touch.
A paintbrush like a horse's tail
that swiped at flies you couldn't change.
60,000 lemon rinds.
Moot remains of destiny.

Your fingers were making lemonade.
Time, like sugar, dissolved.
A comb for days when heads weren't bald.
A doll minus her right leg,
severed just above the knee.
Were you testing your smile
when doctors said I'd lose my own
to see if curves could ever aim at suns again?
83 beer caps, scattered like unwanted dimes.
One for every casket filled.
The willow trees were weeping too.

Fishing line, just skeins of it,
you used to wile away the hours.
A single earring minus post.
Nibbled off? Lost in floods of lust saliva
some late night of loneliness.
A dozen bibles, pages torn.
You ditched them all --
their fancy, sculptured promises,
their thick commandments
stained with sweat --
when Gramma slid into her grave
on skates of useless rosaries.
Their parchment flesh, their turtle doves,
brittle now like bark and twigs
that bitch inside a roaring fire.

Bio: Janet Buck is a three-time Pushcart Nominee and the author of three collections of poetry. Her work has recently appeared in Three Candles, PoetryBay, Red River Review, Runes, Stirring, The Concrete Wolf, Branches, The Carriage House Review, Facets, Sand to Glass, The American Muse, and hundreds of journals world-wide. In 2002, Buck's poetry is scheduled to appear in Artemis, The Montserrat Review, Recursive Angel, Apples & Oranges, The Paumanok Review, Pig Iron Malt, Gertrude, The Pedestal Magazine, Southern Ocean Review, and The Pittsburgh Quarterly. In 2001, Buck received awards from Kimera, L'Intrigue, Sol Magazine, and Kota Press.