CL Bledsoe is the author of the young adult novel Sunlight, three poetry collections (____(Want/Need), Anthem, and Leap Year), a short story collection called Naming the Animals, and five forthcoming books. A poetry chapbook, Goodbye to Noise, is available online at www.righthandpointing.com/bledsoe. Another, The Man Who Killed Himself in My Bathroom, is available at here. His story, "Leaving the Garden," was selected as a Notable Story of 2008 for Story South's Million Writer's Award. A story, “The Scream”, was selected as a Notable Story of 2011. His poem “The Bank” was nominated for 2010 Best of the Nest and his nonfiction piece “Thesis” was nominated for 2012 Best of the Net. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 5 times. He blogs at Murder Your Darlings. Bledsoe has written reviews for The Hollins Critic, The Arkansas Review, American Book Review, Prick of the Spindle, The Pedestal Magazine, and others. He lives with his wife and daughter in Maryland.
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Dear Dad,
I understand that your wife was dying a slow death
in the bedroom, this woman you’d failed so many times
how could you forgive yourself? She stank of piss, covered
the walls in feces; scratched us all with her overgrown nails
so we’d get fever, though it was nothing to the burning
in her brain; she screamed the pain out all hours of the night,
but it was too much to just pass between her thin lips. Dad,
I get it. You drank away the best years of her life while wading
through rice fields. You told yourself a working man deserves
anything. The truth is life doesn’t care about dues.
Dad, unfortunate son, you had the hardest row to hoe of any
of us, but you divvied it up good. The horror-show in your eyes
spread over us all. I ran hard and broke free, behind me, pillars
of sand I used to know as family. I can smell them in the wind,
but cannot ever turn to see them. Sometimes, when it blows right,
I hear their spindly voices complain about their backs, the weather,
how long, oh how long it takes an empty body to die.
Possible Etymologies of Certain Clichés
Disease (Huntington’s):
A 50/50 shot.
Hope:
Don’t say the ground shifts and turns to ice. You’re not sliding. This isn’t pain you’re feeling. You’re not waking from a dream, sitting straight up in bed, looking in mirrors, spiders dangling over your gaping maw. Remember: Ripley was a liar. Realizations fade and reform daily. Damocles was a fool, aching to swallow a sword. Awaken: you’ve got a meeting at 9:00. Pretend lust, pretend warmth. Wear a smile like a nametag through your days.
Memory:
There’s a trail leading to whatever this is. Follow the line of scent, if you can, Watson’s nose in the air as guide. There are answers, but first there must be questions. In all the worst books, sense can be made, breadcrumbs left by orphans, tufts of hair, slips of paper revealing the lie that is simplicity. I don’t know how to paw your bones from the dirt and rebuild them into hands. I never knew what flesh was for, only hiding, momentarily, the wetter truths. I have no answers, not even questions, only certain basic feelings, and those fade like the names of unfulfilling lovers.
Mother:
A howling thing. A wraith calling for you. A woman made old by suffering. A stranger dying in the other room. Darkness blanketing the heart. An object lesson in the betrayal of the body. A pile of bones arranged artlessly on a bed. Grey hair and empty eyes. An ache that sustains.
The Sound of Hooves
Panic lives beneath the pores, small enough
to get in, too large to ever leave. It breathes
the exhalations of hope, recycles the stale air
that remains when all else has fled. Panic
shouts when it whispers, destroys with the clearing
of a throat. Panic has no wings, but it knows
what it is to fear falling. The sight of a fleeting
figure against the tree line, wildness lingering
on the tongue; the animal brain no longer distracted
by fleas needs new annoyances. Panic isn’t a myth
to the man who’s seen its horns. The red eyes
of goatdom penetrate the deepest fog and yet
project that hot fog, themselves. And yet what
they see is blurred at best. They need time
and thought to focus. Quick action will defeat them.