Tim Suermondt

My Bloody Heel at Gettysburg

Gingerly as a moth I make my way down
the rugged rocks at Devil’s Den, reminding

myself that the battle started when a group
of Confederates rode into town, looking

for shoes, the importance of good shoes
looming over me more than I could have

imagined, as important as a good man
and a good woman, a good bottle of wine,

a good ball team, hope where there hasn’t
been any in sight for days and months.

I feel a tad of blood seep through my sock,
but I survive, well enough to flank around

General Pickett’s Buffet and make it back
to the hotel along the no longer employed

railroad tracks, the pink light of the early
evening gnarled in the clustered poplar trees

like a sharpshooter and I unlock the door
and slip, relatively unscathed, out of my shoes,

 


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Tim Suermondt is the author of two full-length collections: TRYING TO HELP THE ELEPHANT MAN DANCE ( The Backwaters Press, 2007 ) and JUST BEAUTIFUL from New York Quarterly Books, 2010. He has published poems in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Blackbird, Able Muse, Prairie Schooner, PANK, Bellevue Literary Review and Stand Magazine (U.K.) and has poems forthcoming in Gargoyle, A Narrow Fellow and DMQ Review among others. After many years in Queens and Brooklyn, he has moved to Cambridge with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.