The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Steven Trebellas

LIKE MY MOTHER'S

Because you are kind,
with hair like my mother's,
I am up in the early a.m.,
dodging sweepers and newspaper vans
making my way up Cardinal Street
on a mission of heartbreak

to brood like a cigar-store Indian
at the distance of one block
feeling your spirit radiate
through the sheet metal
and corrugated steel of the trailer park

where you sleep, along with your kin
beneath a single security light
in your tubes of tin. I remain
your Johnny Walker friend,
as the first ray of morning sun
hits your wall
and falls upon your breast.


HOUND BLOOD

A dirty little poem by one
whose car is stalled
in the pre-gentrified zone.

My hands are greasy,
the notebook streaked,
the Bic leaks like a dipstick.

Thank God I'm past
the bad architecture, and
closer to home. Selah.

All last fall they chromed
the up-town mall--very
chic, very contemporary.

Nobody showed but roaches.
Can fake stars and fountains
cure shrunken wallets

or broken heads? I'll tell you
a secret, there's a little piece
of Heaven out past

the power station,
where twin rivers meet, a
bench where the city ends.

That's where I go when
I get this hound blood.


APOLOGY