WHO ASKED ABOUT NEGOTIATING DIFFERING PERSPECTIVES WITH MY SON IF THERE ARE ANY WHILE SUPPORTING HIS CHOICE
In the video he stands at the plastic yellow-and-blue easel
A big sheet of paper is covered with slashes and drips
His awkward grip on the brush
Our old dog lumbering into the scene
Dog and boy hug
Keep going I say
Cars splash through melting
snow on pavement
Drip drip goes
the gutter
Can I stop he asks
Back then I did not see how morning made us
We moved unevenly through the day
filling it with fine motor skills and bad food
I did not recognize that paint on paper
one winter afternoon
would be anything more
than what it was which was
that he didn’t finish
and the dog wandered
out of the frame
AT THE SHOOTING RANGE
Shell casings ricochet off my arm
flicker like hummingbirds
Hot from flight they snag
in the weave of my sweater
Such beautiful moltings and scatterlings
these brassy hearts
The gun’s barrel is domestic gray
like a pen in my hand
To know what you know I load
seventeen hollow-point
bullets to nest
in the chamber
I squeeze the trigger of the spring-loaded frame
as one shot a thousand feet
per second flies toward the target
its jolt tangling my hair
WOMEN & WAR SESTINA
We pass around Jane’s photo
In black & white a helmet
covers her soldier’s face
Somewhere in Afghanistan there’s news
We complain that we don’t know
how things are going
I worry about my son’s going
& stroke the edges of Jane’s photo
Like a charm, it shields my knowing
the specifics of his helmet
I guard against too much news
but headlines mark my face
Every war zone is a face
scarred by combat’s goings
Jane anticipates bad news
wonders if unevenness in the photo
means her soldier’s tilted helmet
is a sign of unknown knowns
Mary panics that she doesn’t know
Searches blurry images for faces
& declares history like a helmet
sings with soldiers’ going
I notice how light in Jane’s photo
slants in shadows across some news
We’re good at dodging news
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