terry boykie
Terry Boykie received a BA in biology from Montclair State
College and an MA in earth science from Wesleyan University.
Terry is active with the American Society of Association Executives
Association and the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
Terry lives in Washington, DC, with his wife Barbara. Most important,
Terry is the inventor of Slashball, the game for the next 100
years. www.slashball.net
AMERICA 1950
Shower's over.
Tattooed boys, their negro malice quelled
for an instant by the midday sun,
play mechanic with a '35 Plymouth.
A biplane sputters; "No Worry Bleach"
flutters behind. Full-bellied war heroes gawk,
then retreat to the business of baseball, beer
and the late night whippings to follow.
Weaned from her benefactress, a waif,
encased in steel, soon-to-die, suckles a fudgecicle;
the drips lapped from the mud
by a mutt with three legs.
Overripe females, dresses stained with Kool Aid,
converge on a truck gutted from Anzio,
its cargo of foodstuffs not good enough for Europe.
Sam The Dented-Can Man, his right eye erased at Wake,
leers with what remains at the bundles of
bosoms cloaked in day-old grime.
An old lady (the one whose tonsils were scorched away
by the new doc right there on the front porch),
spies a tin of kraut, fat with gas,
and offers a nickel for its roiling toxins.
An ex-sailor, still a year or two away from
the brain surgeons, counters with a dime.
The auction is on;
two bits wins the can of cabbage;
carrots go for less.
White natives and refugees will eat well tonight.
THE SPINE
From the loft I watch
The spider, pincers
in strike mode,
sway to the beat of
rock and roll as its prey,
caught in a customized net,
drowns in a swale of sweat.
From the rafters I examine,
new from the needle,
the boiling mesh lashed
taut from nape to waist,
its purple strands glistening
through the midday stench
of vinyl and fresh
peeling flesh.
From the timbers I observe
waves of sinew provoke
mayhem out of view
while tiny hands
withered by the venom
fall onto pink
beefy threads of ink
From the joists I stare
at the heaving web,
its pulse too great
for the widow to wield her
mounting powers;
her torture, alas,
muffled by the tattooed mass.
From the truss I gaze
past the brute
and his cartoon spine
past the aching nakedness
beyond the present
to a future when
I will cower again.
SOMEONE ELSE
I swaggered onto the prairie
in springtime, and
By mid-July, I reached the black
forest - lush -
a balsam-readied bosk riding atop
opalescent bedrock
cooled by a varve of talc.
Mustellid-like allusions, seeping from
hidden wells, summoned me to jasper rims
where I caressed and savored elderberry.
Animal sounds,
embraced within dewy canyon walls,
echoed in the dark.
Fearless, I probed distant fissures
where monsters might have lurked, but
I found only sweetened earth.
Later, when I knew that I must go,
rivulets of glycerin
eased my passage home.
I returned often that fall
and into the early winter
when a storm in the highlands swept
the low country away and
my strut with it.
|
