Friday, April 04, 2003

this is one I sort of stole, it's kinda' like a found poem, I reworked

Graduation

Phil and Jonnie and I used to push our boat
and its engine about as big as my fist
through the back swamps of Lake Lagunita,
shooting guns,
drinking beer stolen from our parents.
Sometimes two of us would stand in the shallows,
scum around our knees,
holding a cotton rope fastened to the back of the boat,
and Phil would drag us around the lake.
I got blisters and rope burns, skinned my knees on floating things.
Jonnie squealed dolphin noises,
sometimes made it up to his feet,
walked on water.

Jonnie got in a wreck
the other day, some girl was driving
on good old Red Ridge road,
the road we used to take to 7-11 to sneak a few
more smokes before going back,
back to what was home,
what we called home, then.

The girl was wasted, so drunk she couldn’t stop
talking about the blood and her hair said the cops.
Jonnie was thrown out the back window of the truck.
broken jaw, broken clavicle, broken
wrist,
possible
high femur fracture, punctured lung;
other things inside flattened or gone.

I haven’t visited him yet at the hospital.

I can’t see it--
flying out the back window of a truck.
I’ve had to break into mine
when I locked the keys inside, cut my arm on the glass.
Squeezing through that
small window is impossible:
I’m telling you.

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