David Estringel

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Lucky Strike

I’m lookin’ for answers at the bottom of a box of Lucky Strikes, pushin’ through shadows, rumigin’ through bits n debris scattered to the oblivion of far corners, jonsin’ for the ache of calm’s chemical burn—the kind that makes you remember you occupy a body, leaving the tongue scaldin’, the mouth n throat flamin’, even teeth scorchin’—and the sweet sweet return of a restin’ heartbeat…n another…n another…n another…The kind that pushes down memories of what’s gone wrong. Mother dyin’. Father, too. Three dogs down n the money that’s dried up—evaporated like alcohol in hands of fire. 

That’s why I smoke these things. (Used to smoke Marlboros.) Can’t afford much else these days. Dyin’ for a drag, I check the box again n still, nothin’ but black abstraction n the lil things that rattle when shaken…n me, livin’ at the bottom, a shadow man waiting for my luck to strike…again.

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Summer ’76, or Boil Boil Toil n Trouble

Cicadas are whinin’ melodic in the pecan trees early this mornin’, as turgid, meaty ovals crunch loud ’neath my feet. Rusty laps water out the ol’ metal basin near the chicken coop with his drowsy eyes drowsin’ n his black-spotted, purple tongue lappin’. 

Mom n grandad are always whisperin’ whisperin’ whisperin’ talkin’ talkin’ talkin’ ‘hind shut windows n doors. (Married people stuff, I think)

So, I’m tossin’ leaves n dandelions, spit n dirt ’to the tub, stirrin’ counter-clockwise-like with the bristle side of an’ ol’ shoddy broom, tendin’ to the lang’rous boil o’ my muddy witch’s brew…

casting circles…conjurin’ change…movin’ n shakin’…disruptin’  th’ pristineness o’ God’s white noise.

For what? I don’t know, but the soul knows what it wants

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Let the Apples Fall

Far, deep into the morning sky settles a beckoning blue. A blue blue. The bluest blue anyone ever did see—just beyond where the sorghum field meets the horizon in a blur of white and violet and gray. Heady stalks of red-brown sway soft in the honied breeze, whisperin’ how they do, gossipin’ all the way down to where the orchard fence ends haphazard onto the open road headed out of town. The smell of blossoms and pollen sift through the screen of my bedroom window, like the sun, and warm the cold of these walls painted a comely shade of quiet. Leanin’ ’gainst the pane, the roar of a distant tractor conjures stirin’s at the breakfast table downstairs. Furious scrapin’s of forks. The hurried gath’rin’ of plates. Scuttles of work boots ’cross time-worn planks out the back door. Inhaling deeply, I close my eyes and see indigo, counting the days ’til the apples fall.

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Banner Art:
The Apple Orchard – The Bath Road, Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, A.R.A., 1926, Wikimedia Commons, US-PD