2017
FIVE
I remember Mama’s worn hands
on the steering wheel, flying down 49.
Grassy fields and their farms roll over the hills like blankets.
Sweet orange is home,
lazy afternoons filled with tangerine sunbeams and sagging sofa beneath the ladder
of my father’s spine. They both creak with age.
Cinnamon’s flare belongs to youth,
to blood-rush red knuckles crushing rubber-link chain on the backyard swing set.
I push further and further into the sky, even as I am tethered to
the grassy earth.
Black mint demands a surrender.
I collect years among wrappers as the icy dome above becomes cracked
porcelain behind ebony bare-bone branches.
The young breezes were gentle, but these are crooked.
Today is wintergreen, sharp and intact.
Extrusive, the pine trees jut out of the earth’s flesh like hipbones.
Cold air is sharp in my mouth, and I have grown mentholic.