Eldon Turner

Football Hero

                                          
New on the new grass, the monkey green boy,
everything to learn – breast, bone, deep curve,
gods of the body – and to know gods age long.
Always go alone, as he goes where he goes, torched
with youth, big veined blood-return to strong
heart, and she the flutter, the tremor, never
close enough, tackle, crush and gasp.

Arrived from swimming, drips his body onto sand.
Grin, grin, grin. Engage him, she thinks. He will not
engage other than a goddess – too brunette. It’s
a blue-eyed blond up the beach gets attention.
Kitchen, cooking, cleaving – all ancestral baggage.
Tailgate, tailgate, tailgate. Ever the blocking, kicking,
the game of passes, won and lost by touchdown there,
where we’re pretty sure she knows what he’s doing.

---

Gabriel Plays Hollywood

He played the wilting part, so
slip-out-unnoticed, stage directed
behind the scrim, stage left, turn,
rise, wings under purple light.

He moved sluggish, torso all ribs.
He stumbled when the dance
began, gave tripping the boards
that awkward meaning.

He never memorized his part.
He bowdlerized the song of golden
streets, missed the major keys, even
clanged the tunes, a brass band sound.

Awkward that he feigned joy at the party.
Every soul attending saw him, pale as air,
costume eerie-jeweled as tiny molecules
under dimmed house lights. They watched
him wing away before the maitre d’ bowed
out the finale, G’spièce de résistance.


 


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Eldon Turner lives in Gainesville, FL. He was the inaugural editor and is now poetry editor of Bacopa, the journal published by The Writers Alliance of Gainesville. He has published poems in Blind Man’s Rainbow, Harpur Palette, Main Street Rag, Poetalk, Prairie Poetry and several other online and print journals.