The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Joe Bishop
Young Feller’s Tale
Ne’er a flobber on the barrisway.
I heave a dead man’s dive, Fadder’s sod, born on Outer Ring. He cut cord, drove past overpass. I roved with he and Mudder past lichen-claimed graves, beaver dams rigged from crabapple trees. We climbed tolts, traipsed gullies, waded through bog, weaved erratics, the stunted tuckamores over barrens, and tangled in pines. Maggoty nippers nipped. Roots flipped me arse over kettle. Mudder smooched where it smert. We made ne’er a queak stitching warmth from pelts. I sparked splits come duckish. Brindy boughs crackled and creamed. Flankers sprayed from junks I dropped. Fadder spun one of his yarns. He’d tell of his spell in a whale, how his bites dug floors of blubber, how he built a flue up blow hole. Pay he no heed, Mudder’d say. I jillick mid a screecher of gulls. Humpbacks blast and gush to fathom the sun’s harpoons. The sea sings her hooks in me deeps. Touching Lines
My name, I find, engraved beside my brother’s, marking a day twenty-five years ago, hands-on hours when we found spikes for carving in this cove of bedrock not much wider than St. Matthew’s altar. Shoulder blades press against incline of strewn slab. I wedge (a cyborg, of sorts) near spiders who dip in pooling craters. Words on my app autocorrect as I spell-out— playing house with cousins—our unrestraint assembled these slabs to tables, turned the shale to plates, crag to cabinet—or when house was church—my brother, best man or Reverend— once I stood in as bride—now I enter the word fossil—fingerprints impinge on glass. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |