Aaron Brossiet
What Ivor Thord Grey Would Say
My Dutch relatives don’t
understand the Spanish
bandied about in El Elegante
barbershop, or why Los Dias
de Muertos is celebrated
at Cesar Chavez Elementary.
They look to their shoes instead
of the young Poncho Villas
hanging outside the doorway
of Canita’s hip hop store.
They drink Budweisers
at Coctailz advertising POLASKI
DAYS & FREE POOL. Aunt Isla
used to toe the line on the these curbs
during Memorial Day parades
and shape dough into windmill
cookies everyday of the week.
The ’57 chevy is still crammed
into the lobby of John & Sons
Used Cars and Body Shop.
Names loiter on neighborhood signs:
Sommerdyke Plumbing;
Van Raalte and Tulip Streets.
Ivor would warn, borders lead to vulnerability
as Island Latinos keep the bus stop bench
between themselves and the Mexicans.
Ivor would say, “Beware amigos: just past
the Dollar Store and Four Star Gas
Taco Bell keeps its drive-thru open
late into the night.”
Over the Hills & Far Away
After Robert Rauschenberg
Many are the moves
my ballerina makes, her leg
in white tights, a steeple
rising from hip, past ear
and pointing to a world
without end. These words
ring like the church bells
of my past. My father
standing behind the podium,
potato juice instead of water
in his glass. My brother
asleep in my stepmother’s lap.
But through the riddle, not
the narcotics I found myself,
far from evening’s visible moon,
in my seventh summer,
walking backwards with my
eyes closed on Shook’s farm,
lost to dusk, the blood of strawberries.
Tonight, lying on my back
looking at the sky, I wonder
when did we stop dropping our
jaws at the sight of jumbo jets
releasing their white thread into
the wind and the sunset.
Many are the moves
my ballerina makes, her leg
in white tights, a steeple
rising from hip, past ear
and pointing to a world
without end. These words
ring like the church bells
of my past. My father
standing behind the podium,
potato juice instead of water
in his glass. My brother
asleep in my stepmother’s lap.
But through the riddle, not
the narcotics I found myself,
far from evening’s visible moon,
in my seventh summer,
walking backwards with my
eyes closed on Shook’s farm,
lost to dusk, the blood of strawberries.
Tonight, lying on my back
looking at the sky, I wonder
when did we stop dropping our
jaws at the sight of jumbo jets
releasing their white thread into
the wind and the sunset.
Murmuration
Over boiling rapids black
starlings cloud and undulate in
patterns: mottle on Petoskey stones,
black cherry stains --
my shirt, your mouth.
--
Aaron Brossiet has poems published previously in The Mac Guffin, Sky Magazine, Mudfish Magazine, and online at Redneck Review. He also won the 2010 Literary Life Bookstore poetry competition judged by Heather Sellers and was short listed in the 2012 Fish Short Memoir Prize judged by David Shields . Currently, he’s an M.F.A. candidate at the University of Texas El Paso.