Stuck on The Battlefield

1.         Confession

 

I’m trying to write

but can’t

stop thinking about Frank Stanford.

How he shot

himself in the heart

three times

with a small caliber pistol.

Probably

 

the same kind

that killed Penny

the night of our groom’s dinner

for the thirty feeder pigs. The thieves

didn’t take anything

else, just the piglets,

didn’t know

they were missing until

daddy’s count was off

 

the next morning. I can see

the black hole

between the dog’s mud

brown eyes and

how the skull

brains and

blood were scattered

on the ground like busted eggs.

How looking at the exit

wound from behind

the dog’s head,

it looked like someone took

a hammer

and smashed out

the back of the twilit sky.

 

I feel like I can smell

the powder burns on Stanford’s hands,

sulfur reek like trying to

warm your hands by cupping

palms around lit fuse

firecrackers. I can see

the hole in the dog’s face and how

it died with a frozen snarl,

lips stretched to show

the roots of its teeth and

the black spots on its gums.

 

I imagine Stanford tried

to breathe between

each bullet and whisper

the name of

each woman

he had loved.

I wonder if

the walls of his heart

were worn

thin through

the pain of loving

two women at once

and if the chambers

collapsed in on

themselves without

a final beat;

gurgled,

spit and

sprayed

a speckling of blood

onto the table

where the moon first said

I love you.

 

 

2.         An Act of Contrition

 

Before I get attacked for

my inaccuracies about Frank Stanford

I want to

apologize to his wife

 

and CD Wright.

I can hardly imagine losing someone

you love in so

tragic and unfortuitous a way

I want to meet them

in the middle and say

I loved him too.

Maybe not him

as the person but him

 

as the writer who would make me

think for hours about

the pain of having my eyes

sucked out by soda straws. Who would enjoy

the tasteless jelly and

hard disk of my lens?

How they would have to suck

and suck to pluck the retina from my brain with a

pop

and final slurp

like a stale string of

spaghetti. I imagine I have offended

 

his women invading their last private

memories, infected those stained mental

pictures with speculation and half-truths. How

I would hate if they stepped into

my life and tried to picture my

 

grandfather’s deathbed and wondered about

his hollow cheeks and eyes

glossed with dementia, his

mouth permanently agape. How

grandmother’s tented hands tried to wet his

lips and tongue with a moist

sponge. His choking on the excess

drops; swinging wild

fists and bruising her

arms. She swore he was mad

 

drunk again,

pulling his belt through

the loops

and snapping it like a bull whip.

Ready to go

after the kids for smoking

that goddamned dope in the house.

Not sure if

he could even smell

the shit over the whiskey

soaking his shirt and vomit

mottling his beard. How

 

he had no last words just

a grunt

a last effort to stave off

death. How he never

rose and met the light but

sunk into the mattress

as we said the rosary. How

he just died and

no one noticed

until the smell

of his bowels and piss

plugged our noses.

 

© 2012 Travis Andries