Five poems ---- Kevin Minh Allen

Backseat Business

When I told you I loved you, you nodded

as if I would just evaporate into large cities

I planned to move to and you’d return

to small houses you planned to sell.

Kissed while twisting in the backseat and laid

my hand on your nude stomach only to watch

you blend back into your mother’s thigh,

thickened with every slap of your hide.

In your family’s cramped living room, your father watched

me watching you and your brother on the sinking couch

singing loudly to Vietnamese karaoke with a voice

only my mother could have taken to her grave.

Walking Along Airport Way South, Seattle, WA

taciturn,

walking through, faces caught

in the hurdles and voids and No-Left-Turns

of this revolving city.

burrowing umbrellas

press into onyx-drenched skies,

precipitating the downfall of hems,

clinging to that last inch of ankle.

church bells peal woe

for a fallen soldier and

plaster their sagging tears

to reflections of children and dogs in windows.

           

thick, thorny blackberry branches

push pieces of sidewalk

into gutters swelling with bloated leaves

and the occasional sandy heirloom.

highways converge overhead

in a time-worn thimble-fingered stitch

that mainly mends air pockets,

but is re-used to attach sequined neon auras to night’s black cloak.

Our Rejoinder

if they were to ask us:

‘why then?’

‘what were you thinking?’

our answers would appear too shallow for their lofty ears.

lock our reasons in a box and keep them high on an attic shelf.

our time was our own for standing on the balcony

and letting crickets land on our fingers, playing fiddles in our palms.

if we were to turn and ask each other:

‘why us?’

‘why now?’

the vast hay field we lie in the middle of would answer,

‘foolishness is not the provenance of the young.’

incredulous, we release life’s little tantrums under the setting sun

and watch our devotion skip from one blade of grass to another.

Shit-Canned

It’s November, and with a lot of time on my hands, I stand in line at church and vote Libertarian, and then come home to make myself a fried baloney sandwich. Feel like calling my friend at his auto shop to check on the new front fender I ordered for my mom’s van. She slid into a snow bank at the mall trying to avoid a renegade shopping cart. Instead, I walk outside to the sidewalk, roll a couple of packed snowballs in my hands and throw them at passing snowmobilers. Hit one and missed the others. Sometimes they chase me down to the school and back, but this time they respect the truce. I walk back into my apartment and finish eating my sandwich.

Playroom

too many graves

prematurely dig themselves

out of bones that lie at rest

inside memories of a child

whose laughter fills the room like

sunlight you can never wash off