Midwest Theodicy
I hunger for this town that taught my bones.
I bite my wrists
to drink the dreaming there.
Lima,Ohio,
its streets my arteries,
my heart a
factory, prisons in my eyes.
Summer of ’68,
Martians and Mansons,
blood dripping
from each newspaper I tossed
across brown
lawns, houses warped from thirst,
water sprinklers
clicking diamonds in the sun,
velvet mosquitoes
draining our lives
with the necessary
needle of need..
Pumping my bike
until my thighs quiver
like tender
animals, as if the bike’s breaths
depend on my
search, searching for something,
something in the
wonderball night, racing home
from the Ranger
Theater, heat lightning
illuminating
monsters in the sky.
Home safe, probing
shadows, scaring ghosts,
touching the
silence in old bowls and spoons,
thirsty pine trees
dusting a sleepy moon.
Daylight always
came slaughtering children
as I lugged the
fallen world up each street,
seeing through the
eyes of the junk yard dog
strutting past
dead buses and bleeding chevys.
Black man slung on
a chair in a doorway,
his sunlit face
worn and creased as his shoes,
radio blues, his
house a busted skull.
Louise’s Drug
Store, five cents for water,
rusted ceiling
fans swirling exhaustion,
“Nigger Baby”
candies trapped in a jar.
Endless August,
race riots, skies like bones,
cancer moon
between abandoned buildings
like an old man
creeping between tombstones,
swifts circling,
cries striating the sky,
a bum stumbling to
join two cigar butts,
young whores
across from the police station,
the wind puffing
their dresses pink and green,
Kewpee Burger,
photos of cows on the wall,
Old Man Ganser
clutching the back booth,
chanting tales of Iwo
Jima to the floor.
Autumn rains came
at last, whispering sweetness.
Blossoming into
lightness at route’s end,
I learned the art
of invisibility,
seeking fleeting
redemptions in the doom:
Father humming,
spreading mayonnaise sandwich,
Mother in her
yellow dress, reading Rimbaud,
bathing the porch
in her light, like a firefly
cupped in palms, I
lie gently in her lap.
She smoothes my
hair in silent benedictions
as swishtree
apples thump the earth, my heart.
Kite-Flying At Night
My
hand on your hand, in
your hand, cupped
in,
feels like
another’s, yours like mine,
letting the string
race out
like hourglass
sand in reverse,
holding it,
letting go, joy ripples
taking our breath
skyward
to climb the
vibrant stars.
Your nervous hand
explores me and I
let you, hesitant,
laughing, learning
to honor both
touch and release,
the sky and its
luminous silence.
The kite quivers
at first
a no, then turns,
shy, half-
yielding, a yes,
begins the dance,
touching an invisible
wave
that teases
through the trees,
forgetting its
fragile link to flesh,
peering at islands
we can only dream
below, our backs
velvet smooth and slippery,
we trust love inch
by inch until
with a last sliver
of surrender
the moon,
remembering who we are,
gently lifts us
home.
Sean Lause has published fiction in The Mid-American Review and Liquid
Ohio and poetry in Poetry International, Poetry Motel, Zillah, European Judaism, Poetica, Ruah,
Curbside Review, Rio, Mother Earth International, Bathtub Gin, The Blue Collar Review, Struggle,
Angel Face, ICON, Epicenter, Paper Wasp and Frog Pond.
He teaches Writing, Speech and a course in the Holocaust at Rhodes State College in Lima, Ohio.
Email: Sean Lause
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