early october
i have nightmares in the honeysuckle hour between
sunrise and when you wakebruises from sleeping
with my legs crossed tightly and my arms under my
armpits i have been here before
when the coils under me freeze and the bed is hard
i crack the way ice cracks when it’s
dropped in sweet tea
my fingers dig past your breast and i scratch inside
your ribs the weeps of women misheld by shaky hands
are not unfamiliar to me and yours is no different in tone
but the inertia that carries your sobs and soft beggings pins me
to the headboard and you feed me chocolate and blueberries
until my mouth bleeds
hooks of dead trees push against
a gray sky like burrs on a bare foot
this morning i watched a leaf die i watched the supple life drain from
its stem and saw rust inhaled from its imperfect edges
i die the same way from the outside in
My father stands in clarion water.
Scarred palms
cast his hand crafted
fly fishing rod into a stream in Oquossoc.
His
arm, like the drink he stands in,
moves in consistent patterns;
he can be predicted and expected,
and like the clouds he stands under,
quiet and looming.
Endless sheets of rain and thunder
in his chest.
When he looks at my Mother,
his wife, with an uncompromising,
warm,
stare, the room is hushed,
if only for these few
taut
moments.
Shakes my hand
as though he were applying for
a job I was hiring for.
He sits and waits in the car while I
finish saying goodbye
to a girlfriend I’ve had for no more than a month.
Helped me buy a $70 dollar ring for her.
And when ring after ring had come
and gone, he remains
there,
in his big, ivory truck.
J Anderson says
March 4, 2018 at 5:27 pmHaving read Lavoie’s chapbook, “Upheavals”, I have to say the thing I admire most about his collection of poems (these two poems included) is his graceful execution of a vision of the world in which we experience the idea of ‘upheaval’ as both obstacle and absolution; something that is given to us and an action that we perform. He crafts such lovely connectedness between all of the things that hold us down: instances of loss, confusion, anger, and the burden of suffering, then he turns those experiences upside down and presents the reader with such passion and primal desire that we, as a reader, have no option but to also push ourselves upward with him.
Fred LaMotte says
January 24, 2018 at 9:25 pmWonderful. Wish I could write like that. Raw, brilliant, sensuous, honest and invigorating honesty. Thank you.
Sam Silva says
January 19, 2018 at 12:07 pmI especially like the second poem.