Five Poems

Bill Brymer

Brown-Eyed Girl

Amazing eyes and dark hair

that brushed her shoulders,

pouty lips, soft spoken, quick wit

and funny, rarely so much in the same

package.

If I hadn’t been married,

who knows? — time and distance

can prod you into believing a thing

had a chance of happening.

Perhaps in a parallel universe

those two are happily reading

her story in the latest New Yorker,

celebrating with a bubble bath

and candles, her idea,

Van Morrison on the bluetooth, his,

a cat on the window ledge

fur damp with rain, the two of them

grateful for their life together

and wondering aloud why anyone

would settle for anything less.

Goldilocks Zone

I live in the appropriate suburb, new trees

cycled in to replace the old and failing.

A quiet neighborhood,

most of the time,

time measured in geese and buckets

of wood ash swept from the firebox

using the small brass-handled broom

that comes with poker and tongs.

Easy life: every convenience

a phone call away

delivery to my door,

urgent care in the shopping center

with the Planet Fitness.

The sometimes noise of

helicopters searching for

malcontents and murderers

moving like meteorites

through the fringe

of our perfectly balanced

atmosphere. I don’t mind

a little cinnamon

in my everyday oatmeal.

Kibble

The man in the grocery carries

the bulky sack of dry dog food

as one carries an exhausted child

through an amusement park,

no rides, but wonky carts,

the colors of cotton candy

and snow cones

in the chips and vegetable aisles

and a people fed up with feigning

happiness or civility, jockeying

for better position in the

express checkout lane.

Look at what the years have done to Joni Mitchell,

lithe siren of Laurel Canyon, now radiant

garden gnome.

Live long enough, time promises,

I will compact you into the purest version

of yourself,

squeezing out all vain glory,

compressing all-consuming cares

into rock candy,

until you bleed pure color

like a centerpiece of pert tulips

on a white draped Easter table.

Back Seat Zombie

My mother is driving my sister to get zapped,

a targeted dose of the sun aimed

at the tumor-ridden region of her brain.

Of course I know she will die.

Of course I do.

Of course.

But I can’t comprehend it really happening.

If she believes otherwise, my sister doesn’t let on.

At least, not here at the beginning of the end.

That ignorance grants me license

to joke from the back seat.

Careful they don’t fry too many brain cells,

I say, and make a zombie face.

She’s in the passenger seat, watching me

from the little mirror on the flip side of the visor

in between making adjustments to her wig.

Too late, she replies, sticks her tongue out,

rolls her eyes up in sockets. Groans.

I miss her terribly.

Spend tortured years stewing

over what our family did wrong.

I become old and gray,

contemptuous of god and love,

hollow as a papier-mache pinata

before the brutal dichotomy

punches through my thick skull:

there are those who are blessed,

and those who are not, the latter

having as much chance of changing their lot

in life as the dead do rising again.