Hunched over the fat American Lit book in Mr. Phillip’s class,
I jerk awake at the shock of the last line. Then, as he begins to drone,
I fall back into another autumn, seven years earlier, in a little town now
grown so much it’s been swallowed by its own sprawl. Early in the season,
leaves turning but still warm enough for us to ride our bikes to the scene.
Around the corner from my cousin’s house, the driveway swooped down
through shaggy boxwoods crowding over into the street. We were too late
to see much. Fresh scuffs of rubber on the pavement, ambulance pulling away
without siren or throbbing lights. No dented car, no lumbering policemen
or sobbing mother. Just the bike with the banana seat crumpled in the grass.
And the motion of a man’s arm moving in calm, neighborly diligence.
As “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” swims back into focus on the white page,
I see the methodical sweep of his garden hose, the stream of water paling brown
to rust along the gutter, that one dark blot that refuses to be washed away.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 5.
David E. Poston is the author of two poetry chapbooks, including Postmodern Bourgeois Poetaster Blues (which won the NC Writers’ Network’s Randall Jarrell Chapbook Competition), and the full-length collection Slow of Study. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Atlanta Review, Mobius, Pembroke Magazine, North Carolina Literary Review, and Typehouse, among others. He is a frequent book reviewer for Pedestal and a co-editor of Kakalak.
See all items about David E. Poston
