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Poetry || SubmissionsPoems by Janet BuckA Boy, a Bottle, a Man A blank page of six-year old innocence sits in the bed of a pick up truck, watching the sun retreat in a blaze of rusted fear. "My father will be right back," he says to the cop, shuffling his boots in prairie dust, knowing both tact and tale of paltry scene-- binding broken nursery rhymes: a boy, a bottle, a man. The bar stool is an altar and he is the lamb, prepared for Mother's rush of angry words, spilling from soured expectation's breath. She knows inside how his kiss will taste-- that he will forget the gallon of milk. That she will forgive him, bouncing on the mattress in the center of the night, its wires poking through first her clothes and then her skin. This pendulum of hope and not swinging like bridge above a rising river's foam where the shore line is made of thick brown glass and all the rocks are cans of beer. "My father will be right back." His learned tongue recites this prayer-- lying to the smart spun nickel of a swelling moon. by Janet I. Buck Oasis is Forgiving This The more you dig through ashen years, more your hair turns shades to match-- the bigger the buried past becomes. This inky mirror flashes things. And you stare straight in the bull's eye of a bruise, shrinking from potential darts. Across twelve states you hear your father's voice. And the sting returns to haunt this home the way a piece of soiled lettuce spoils all surrounding green. Your ivory bottom, its tiny pair of innocent moons sifting through words, looking for snag, for judgment hitch, for snapping belts of childhood. Every mile ahead of us will be a camel's desert walk through pitchforked eyes and swirling sand. Oasis is forgiving this: Rash as red as borscht on linen tablecloths. Blue black stripes smiling like a swastika. by Janet I. Buck Plastic Over Saccharine A four-year-old kid plays hide 'n seek with the back of his papa's Lazy-Boy. Pressing his face to leather wall. Scent of sunrise sews its batting in a dream. He jockies for attentiveness. Praying he'll be light enough to ride this horse to victory. "Your Dad just likes his alcohol. It isn't that he doesn't love you. He works long hours and needs his space." She'd hang those words like candy canes on Christmas trees. Plastic over saccharine fingers of his innocence just weren't supposed to open up. Beer breath for a goodnight kiss, the only breeze his body knew. Moods were always shifty moons. The slap. The sting. The bruise. The snore. A family full of scarlet cheeks where roses of some need should bloom. He wants to be that shiny can on coasters near his father's lap. by Janet I. Buck Prairie Fires Revisiting unmended walls, guessing if the font of hugs will scale itself to stewing tears, is quite the red-faced risk. As tender as petunia buds hibernating from the frost, but living in the sense of it. Pain has been your puppeteer and I have let you lay down strings, dodge the bee-stings of the past as if we had a row of summers lingering to sort out all old prairie fires. But it is time to hop all fences, lunge the leap, involve yourself in mopping even floors of mud. Give your father pats on backs that help him move the furniture, find the legs of memories an angle on the dusty carpet running out its hour glass. I know you've yearned to make this move, patch the jeans he burned with belts, throw the buckles in a river stronger than hate's undertow. Hardened arteries of love will not be blood moats in the end. This quilt of dread stitched with anger's coffee stains-- it can be fluffed and laid to rest. Truth, in all its knots and wads, is always full of ampersands. Whatever way the nickel turns, I will be your tracks and lights. You will board the train for home, walk across the wobbled threshold into arms of undeserted apertures. by Janet I. Buck Sealing Wax Age-old old age. Its prediction coming true like a generic horoscope stretched to fit all carnal fire. Pin pain stabbing the only ankle I've been left. My knee, an also widowed one-- so I press up-hill as salmon do to lay their eggs. The eagle of will is a myth, but I study it nevertheless for they say it has enormous wings that shock you when you get up close. Muscles dragging plastic parts. Grinding and grinning at gray curls dropping-- feathers into soupy sweat. Giving up is sealing wax on a letter I'm not prepared to send. I leave my dent in the wind like the memory of grass. This treadmill is a joke. I pad its rubber like I'm spanking myself and ordering death to go to its room. by Janet I. Buck Old Hurts This odyssey of ancient fallen Jerichos. Your walls like a row of Dominos. If I tap one and force this drive into abyss, will it infect all thorns you've pacified, bring black lava up again? Twist a jagged blade in thighs. I imagine a trip through fields of corn, cities swelling in their soot. To meet scorched dream half-way. Giving acid, rancid tears a better, proper burial. Games are smarter than our souls. Ending them is easier than writing all the rules again. Cards and pawns, shining their swords on bishops of death. Sitting as all children do on pinched raw nerve, assuming age has better hands to strut in rained parades of time. Ishmael returning now to face and bind these ring-less folders of mistakes; old hurts like whores to pay and jump. Our pounding tires, paddles at a mortal auction, raising hands in gesturing: "I lived a gutsy horoscope. There are no other ways to sing." Agony's portfolio was rubber-banded all these years. I worry that its leather cover, all its cracks, will start to bleed. But you have holey jeans to patch, burning belts to put away. Miles will be a bar of soap; love will grow another inch. I will help you wash your back, whipped by couldn't(s) of this world. A cleaner moon will guide us home. Janet I. Buck is a two-time Pushcart Nominee and the author of four poetry collections: Calamity's Quilt, Reefs We Live, Bookmarks in a Hurricane and Before the Rose. Her work has appeared in The Paumanok Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Born Magazine, Ariga, The Rose & Thorn, Pif, In Motion, The Melic Review, and hundreds of print and internet journals world-wide. For links to more of Janet's publications, stop by: http://members.aol.com/jbuck22874/whatsnew.html More Janet Buck poetry at Ariga White Linen Islands in the Deep Achilles' Heels Bones & Borders The Boston Elbow Six poems Today's Situation
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