Jeff Thomas

Winner – Editor’s Spotlight Award in Poetry

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Taking Things Slow

An Eggo waffle, half-eaten, tanning
          on the sidewalk,
discarded, one can only assume, by

someone in a hurry. Today, I’m taking
          things slow. New work
will come. My phone will ring with the call

I’ve been waiting on. This is what
          I tell myself
as I walk the streets of Capac,

as I straddle the top railing of the home run fence
          at the varsity field
then make my way to the pitcher’s mound.

I stand on that high point, the only mountain,
          that as a boy,
I cared to stand on, imagining the sounds

of metal cleats scratching the infield, the voice of
          my drunk father
serenading umpires from his seat in the bleachers.

Rolling red sand between my fingers, I wish I had
          sunflower seeds
to suck on. I loogie home plate before I go and hit

the streets again. Klugg’s Pub is closed for business.
          The school district’s
administration building is an empty field of sprouting

poplars. There’s shattered glass on the pavement beside
          Carroll’s Tire Shop,
windows busted out by rocks or beer bottles. Memories

of these places fill my chest same way that the dead
          sometimes nurture
the living. I see our last name that Uncle Ed stamped

into these sidewalks right after he brush finished
          the wet cement. His son Eddie,
who I called my brother, how his smile turned to ash

long before he held that shotgun to his chin.
          I know more
about my cousin since he blew his face off

than I ever did when he was living.
          I too am guilty.
I’m almost back to my car parked

off North Custer Street. There’s a bandaid
          discarded on the sidewalk,
a lake of gauze in the center of it, an island

of blood splotched within that lake, that island
          covered by ants.
I ponder the taste. I’m almost there. I can see

my windshield flashing sun. I’m so close
          to the trip
down Capac Road, soybean fields swaying

beside ditches on either side of the road,
          stereo blaring
Alice in Chains, my voice straining to keep up.

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Trespassing My Childhood Home

Reflections of leaves flash like fishing lures
          in the water. I stack my muck boots
on a stump. My eyes shine. My feet dip
          inside the Belle River’s mouth. A crop

duster rattles over, propeller humming
          barely above the tree line. Grape vines
choke the banks like nooses, poison
          oak hair tickles my neck. Near

the hedgerow, pheasant wings drum
          against wind gusts, caught like traffic
in this birdshot sky. I’m slow rustling,
          friction from my sleeve

brushing cattails, their fluff floating
          like snowflakes in the air. A beagle
chorus barks, fur tufts tangle in the
          kennel chain-link. Behind the pole barn,

a concrete pad overgrown with weeds.
          As a boy I used a rusty railroad spike
to gouge my name into half-cured cement.
          Now the letters are grey and full of rain

and white dandelion seeds. I stare
          at that name, same as my father’s,
until sweat bleeds down my face
          and I remember what I’m lonely for.

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Basement

During the night a woman crouches by my window
and howls at the moon. I think she wants
her hoodie back. I don’t care to ask. In bed I dream

and I do not dream. Awake I hear the furnace rattle,
pipes clang, the splashing percussion of my neighbor
pissing in the toilet upstairs. It’s repetition without rhythm,

movement but not music. Why would I be here instead
of anywhere else? Was the turn during my childhood
on the playground catching my finger in the snapping

chain of the swing? Too high, too fast, stupid–that’s what
my mother said. Or was it on the varsity field losing skin
to grains of red sand sliding into home plate? It’s infected.

I paid for baseball pants and you don’t fucking wear ‘em.
Sitting on the edge of our bathtub draining orange pus, mother
dumped rubbing alcohol on my leg. I knew not to complain.

Maybe that’s why I’m a pussy. Maybe that’s why
I don’t have words to remind people I’m not
the carpet they walk on. Maybe I’m not so different.

The woman knocking on my window, I’m not letting her
in. She wants the silver pill box full of movie tickets, the pictures
of the camping trip. But I’ve shared enough.

How many years crawling through conversations, lost
in the dark. I flipped on the light, saw yellow teeth
in the morning, how my naked body slumps

stepping into the shower. I wish I was on a train heading west.
Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Boise, Portland—I want to sleep under
an overpass, walk sideways for a while, wake up haggard each day.

I wonder what I’ll think of when police dunk my head in the ocean.
Maybe the tornado in 2004—storm doors bouncing
up, slamming down with each new gust of wind,

light bulbs orange and dim, water overwhelming
the sub-pump, a wave flooding litter boxes, washing
machine, dryer, the five-foot-tall Mattel basketball hoop,

Uncle Bill asleep with his feet up on the corduroy couch,
sister sitting next to her scented candle filling out a page
in her diary, mom with a broom knocking down cobwebs

from the corners of the ceiling, my old man stretched out
on a lawn chair nursing a bottle of Bud Light,
giving mom a pinch on the ass, her jabbing him

with the end of the broom handle, lightning
crashing, thunder shaking the house, that whole
room growing almost entirely dark.

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Horizons

Susie’s scent is so deep in my throat
          I’m choked short
of words and fill the room with groaning.

The whites of her eyes shine in moonlight.
          Maybe I’m not paying
enough attention. Gazing across a landscape

of cotton sheets, oak headboard, dirty laundry,
          her lips press
to mine and air currents between mouths tornado

off our tongues. Above us the fan is
          a cyclone shadow.
We thrust toward the ceiling as if

it were a sky that could hold us, as if
          anyone else might
hear our music or know the blood

hot pulsing in our throats. I wish
          this could last,
her breath dripping down my neck,

my palms slick on her stomach, veins
          snaking beneath
freckles on the back of my hands.

When she rolls away from our embrace
          I steady myself
and fold the horizons of my eyes shut.

I know I’ll wake up in a few hours, stretch
          naked in front
of the mirror. Face damp with salt water

from my eyes, I’ll lace my work boots 
          and walk out
the door. I know it, but I don’t believe it.

I believe I’ll wake up back at Grandad’s camp
          in Presque Isle
bonfire smoke stinging my eyes, the sound

of pine sap sizzling, flames flicking up
          like tongues
licking the night. I’ll steal every moment,

my back wet lying in a meadow of clover
          underneath a horizon
of sun-split clouds. The orange haze of dusk

humid before nightfall when starlight fractures
          like fireworks
inside my astigmatic eyes. None of that

will happen. Work will begin with the sweet
          smell of mortar,
my trowel slicing through a full mudboard.

Atop rusty pipe scaffold, I’ll squint down
          scanning the mud
covered jobsite and feel my spine burning.

Susie flicks off the lamp and rolls back
          to my side. We hold
each other despite this absence of light.

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Could Be A Sign

Gretchen the spackler got her front teeth messed
when she was a child. Some accident
with a frisbee, her older sister, and the neighbor’s dog.
Us two, we still talk on the phone from time to time.
Honestly I can’t tell her anything. She has the strangest
ideas regarding the application of thermometers.

One morning I was sitting across from little brother
cutting up my eggs at breakfast. He dropped
the coffee pot and spilled Folgers onto hot stove
burners. Every smoke alarm in the place started
singing soprano. I can’t get the smell off the walls.
It’s hard not to think that not much is precious.

I find very little meaning unless I’m deliberate
weaving sentiment into my life. It’s work
like everything else. Love is too small a word
for all it encompasses. A couple nights ago
I was buzzing, lying halfway under
the covers next to my old lady. She snored

like a foghorn while I watched
the silhouette of a cat shadowed in moonlight
creeping beside the dumpster outside
our bedroom window. That seemed to me like
it could be a sign. I took a fat rip off my doob,
held it in, rattle-coughed color into my eyes.
I was pretending

the ceiling was Lake Alcona on a calm morning.
I imagined a troop of sailors with me
as their leader, put headphones on and listened
to Led Zeppelin bootlegs. Now that’s fucking living,
that’s passing the time. Lord knows my limbs
have some kinks in them. I didn’t get enough

sapling sunlight. Probably better off if you don’t
take my advice, but there’s worse things than setting
your hammer down and being kind to women 
and children. Change for me was looking
in the mirror, seeing how low my naked body
slumped before stepping in the shower.
Some grease is hard scrubbing, slow rolling
off a man. I’ll come clean and be
stainless one of these days.

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Banner Art:
Photo by Noud, Pixabay, 2023