I want to write you a letter. Email me three words at austinrbeaton@gmail.com and I will.
This was first published by Punch Drunk Press in January, 2018. It’s the title poem of small town outside of, a chapbook available to purchase in July.
small town outside of (sibling)
How bay leaf bends itself
under boiled water; Mom stirs
in October. This here always
where she’s born, fathoms
the taste of quiet waking
again, unhinging rusting
sacrum out bed. If not nine
in this memory I’ll have left
for good, after adolescence
ferried me what I needed
she didn’t know she didn’t
know to give. I color, tell fib
when Lewis & Clark slept
Sacajawea slipped out tent,
tiptoed to stare the Pacific
away from dreaming men.
Is it gonna thunder? I ask.
No, buddy, she says. How
do you know? How do you
know if purple is peace or
purple a thunderhead, since
chain link zodiac arrives from
the past can adults stargaze
beyond what’s then? He guts
in the garage what he caught:
smell of fish & him. Unfolded
carcass like a suitcase, he points
to the innards, names them like
statistics (belly of salmon eggs
take fluorescent like seeds of
a pomegranate, the last beer can
drank (saved / hid in the closet)).
Some year I say, you scare me.
My mouth hatchets inside my
father: inside him: some human.
I don’t want you to be afraid
he cries, scrunching to a face
not his. He leaves to do what
fathers do. Where do they go?
Does it feel like cheating?
Will they hear our youth march
till we unlearn our youth? Mom
in the kitchen bent like a question
mark, scrubbing a clean sink.