I Am a Kite Soaring Above You
I am a kite soaring above you
as you play tag in your backyard.
You run from a boy
and hide behind a sycamore.
As I drop closer to earth
I crash into the tree’s branches,
my thin chest pierced,
flight forever now a memory.
As my ribboned tail flails leaves
you look upward
and shimmy up the trunk
to untangle me.
In your hands you gather me
like a collection of frail bones.
Taking me home you mend
rips and tears with swatches
of cloth used to practice stitching.
For hours you mend
like a princess locked in a tower.
When done, you carry me,
a newborn. Outside, you run,
setting me free. For a moment
I falter. Soon I rise above you,
above trees, above the earth
until I see your distant face
getting smaller and smaller.
When your smile disappears,
I dive toward the nearest tree
crashing again, in need of rescue.
I see you, your hand blocking sun,
then reaching for the string.
Broken, I wait for you.
Time Is a Girl Named Yvonne
I met her in 1967,
city pool, a red bikini,
a twelve-year-old,
so much skin;
I wanted to touch
the blue water
she swam in.
As she burned
on her towel,
I walked by,
glanced,
the oil-shine
of her body,
like staring
at the sun.
I wondered
if I sinned.
∞
An orderly asks
if I know the year.
I do.
I keep it,
a memory
remembered,
forgotten,
remembered.
At bedtime,
her face flickers.
The Stars Are Out
of line, brooding about the night sky
like Brando on a rooftop
where he breeds a flock of pigeons.
Ancients named constellations
like newborns who outlive parents,
waiting for death like a train
whistle mourning in the distance,
how it rattles the bones
like dice tossed by a god
gambling on existence of a universe,
held together by gravity
and wire from an abandoned coop.
Don Narkevic: Buckhannon, WV. MFA National University. Recent work appears/will appear in Street Cake, Neologism Poetry Journal, and Solum Literary Press.