4-7-2020
Grant Clauser
Lucky
He remembers pushing the knife
deep behind the jaw
and cutting down to its tail.
If he was good he could wrap
his pointing finger around the guts
at the gill and pull them all out
in one feather like when his mother
waved at the driveway
and said father won't be back
or anything tonight
then went to her room
and shut herself for three days
until someone called the neighbor.
He remembers thinking that raccoons
must be so lucky
to find those fish guts laying
in the weeds
like a man who finds
his shotgun fully loaded
and everyone asleep.
Trigger Warning
Dod had his father’s pistol
again. Shelly was drunk
but not too much
for a school night.
Her face the soft flush
of poison ivy.
The window that wouldn’t roll
all the way up
let rain in and smoke out.
Lights shone from the Indian Tower
so we drove to the bowling lane.
The parking lot lamps
made circles in the asphalt
like crop circles
and we were alien species.
I think back now
about how Shelly
slammed the car door,
and everyone watched her walk
the way eyes follow a train
running off its tracks.
Her hair wet on her face
as she entered the building.
Dod telling me to drive
anywhere the hell out of here.
Nazareth Road
At the end of my shift
I went to Dod's house
and found him knees down
in the backyard,
his dad screaming,
picking up handfuls of dog shit
and throwing them at him,
Dod taking it like a door
takes slamming, swinging shut
without comment,
a crack starting in the frame.
-from Reckless Constellations, Cider Press Review (2018), selected by Spring POW Guest Editor, Luke Johnson
GRANT CLAUSER is a technology journalist, editor, sometimes teacher and dust collector. His previous poetry books include The Trouble with Rivers, Necessary Myths, and The Magician’s Handbook. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Journal, Tar River Poetry and others. He can be found on Twitter at @uniambic.
