Poems by Lewis LaCook

ENAMEL

In anger her fingernails gnaw the arms of her children
red grins that fish for jokes with hooks
and she spills out of herself an inverse of her shadow
The party tapers, pacing from corner to corner with the sun

What is he learning from the plastic mesh of a summer lawn chair
floating in fumes of suburban pavement
that keeps from him the slow light from a season of closed doors
Keep him with dried-out palms and mercurochrome rage

The party with the red smile
flickers and the air inverts
In this corner her voice bubbles, flailing us with steam

In this corner the suburbs rot and you fall out of your chair
This is how you learn about grace
This is how you learn to bleed


SUMMER CORN

The cat watches her from above with eyes that never stop thinking
about how another man locked her children out of the house
sifting rocks from clean fill, milk from sour candles and incense
Another man tied with thistle, the beating heart of an ear of corn

Have you heard yet your father's blown embers
with a hand across her face, first thought she had
of the city, looking in from where porch light
fails us, never asking us to feel any way about it

Mirrors teach her to hide well inside the frames of her mother's
another man on her children snarling like he beat dogs
He tossed young rabbits into the pen to give them the taste

Is there something in her mouth we can look forward to beyond
the spilled candle's milk her husband soured on his back, heart
stopped and the length of cold dawning in his empty blue eyes