POETRY BY


David Bruckman
© David Bruckman 2005

After the rain
we found 3 dead chickens in the middle of the road,

my brother used a stick he found in some bramble
and pushed them off the cobble.

They rolled on the little stones that had gathered on the surface,
the bodies moved like Egyptian brick, moved like Moses through the desert, moved like death.

He pushed them all the way to the drive with close care and
vicinity, too much.

He got blood on his shoes and asked me what flavor
chicken’s blood was.

I smiled and told him barbeque.

We buried the birds in the front yard
next to the basketball hoop,

and then we talked about what types of the things
the rain can bring in.

 

Witnessing A Birth

The smell of new-skin is thick in the applepores
of your nose and they open and make you feel inflated

gallop,
gallop,
gallop,

through the wet skin, through the puddle mud,
through the thick pie filling of concrete rapture,
until you see the bulbs on the ceiling and the
idiosyncratic mist that fills your lungs

He has a ball of cancer in his stomach

I thought I had jumped,
moved away from my suburban
circle and was vacationing in an
intellectual bodega town,
with all the heavy thinkers,
thought I didn’t really care
about ever coming back home.

But then
I talked to my uncle
while his wife was in the hospital,
and he told me about
Vietnam.

And I
didn’t know exactly
what to say.

“I turned 21 in Vietnam, it didn’t mean shit”

Every man was issued 2 cans of beer
and 1 can of coke,
they would fly a large calf of ice
to the middle of the jungle,
roll your can across the frost for 5 minutes
and it was cold.

“Your grandfather was once
thrown from a car
and wasn’t found until day light,
caught his fucking jaw on
on a telephone poll hook, the side grips,
and just hung there”

He also shot his brother in the leg with a 22
and didn’t tell his mother,
she still doesn’t know, buried next to
Mrs. Darnhill, with those punch colored flowers in spring,
happy yellows and scarlet reds,
that make a graveyard feel beautiful like a rainbow.

But he never told me that he had cancer,
just that his stomach felt heavy
and his shoulders hurt him
sometimes.

Does he wonder if the cancer
will be buried with him
in the plot next to his mother’s,
Can’t they cut it out then
so he can go home
and not look so round, so awkward?

There is no doubt he will do radiation,
lose his hair, scratch at his disease
so hard that he won’t
be able to trust his eyes anymore,
not for him
but for her
because once her hip was better
he promised her a dog
and they would name it after the one
that died while they
were still married
and young.

“They put me in the back, pulling scrap metal,
and the guys, they gave me shit, said maybe I didn’t
have enough of my own work to do.”

They put him there
with the duskheap bits
and broken pieces
because he would not stay at home.

My uncle,
Hard as metal
And I might not
Have ever known,
It ran in the family.

David Bruckman
© David Bruckman 2005

David Bruckman [USA] - 20 something in search of a life mission. Hopes to find it soon, refuses to actively search for it.

 

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