Red Dirt Boy
John G. Hartness
Published by John G. Hartness at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 John Hartness
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Available in print from Falstaff Books Charlotte, NC 2009
Visit me at http://www.johnhartness.com
My heroes are Johnny Cash
and Johnny Bob.
This is for them.
Red Dirt Boy
The Deflowering of the Baptist Deacon’s Daughter
We sang Van Morrison in the key of Budweiser
and danced barefoot in the moonlight,
kissed like it was breakfast with our toes in the creek
while I wrapped you in my faded blue jean jacket.
We woke up in the grass wearing dewdrops and smiles,
staggered drunk on each other
back to that rustbucket Chevy with the cracked vinyl seats.
You jumped out giggling at the mailbox
so Daddy wouldn’t see me in the daylight
and I burned rubber back to the main road
dodging birdshot, big brothers and the highway patrol.
Death of a Small-Town Sports Hero
The middle-aged high school football hero
stood on the fifty-yard line and looked around
at the wreckage of his adulthood
scattered in the laurel wreaths of his youth
as trophies and whiskey bottles and wedding rings
glinted in the grass while the dew
slowly soaked the cuffs
of his bulging size 48 elastic waistband slacks
and ruined his expensive Italian shoes.
He stood there swaying to the deafening chants
of the nubile cheerleaders that still sucked his dick
on the hood of his dad’s Chevy behind the field house
in the shards of his bourbon-hued memories.
The golden boy turned used-car-huckster
with bad knees and failed hair replacement
sat down in the middle of the field,
wrapped his arms around the broken pieces
of the state MVP trophy,
that plastic and lead painted pinnacle of his life
and kissed goodnight to the Saturday Night
Special.
Small Caliber Love
Tequila Sunrise (not her real name)
smoothed an imaginary wrinkle
out of her cerulean alligator-skin miniskirt,
steadied her aim
with the nickel-plated .25 automatic
I gave her for our six-month anniversary
and called me a sonofabitch
one more time.
I had just enough time to contemplate the headlines
“Drunken Poet Murdered by Muse
in No-Tell Motel.”
before Sunny (still not
her real name)
sneezed
and her allergies
blew a hole
in the Room 438 TV screen.
She jumped,
I dove,
but the poor Zenith
was a goner.
After the tears and hysterical giggles
and phone calls from security
faded into memory,
we brushed the glass off the comforter,
turned on the fan in the bathroom
and screwed like teenagers
on a rollercoaster
until the headboard broke
and spilled us laughing and sweating
onto the floor.
Change
There’s a white man painted crimson
with a black boy’s blood
ducking bricks in the streets of Port-Au-Prince
while white women cross the streets of Manhattan
to get away from the black millionaire
in his thug life costume and glittered grill.
There’s a white man staring at a statue
in an Atlanta park
looking at the White House
with a black man in it
and thinking this isn’t the country he knew.
There’s a black champion on the side of a river in Louisville
watching his medal sink in the water
because in 1960 Kentucky a champ
is still a boy.
But on a playground in South Carolina
there’s a timid little white kid
standing scared by the fence
wondering where his momma went
until a chubby black girl with pigtails and pink barrettes
leads him to the seesaw
and he makes a colorblind friend.
God Bless
I see you standing on the street corner
with no left foot,
cardboard sign saying “Please
help. God Bless.”
When he obviously didn’t
bless us all
at least not that sweaty morning
when the dust and the sand and the blood
all ran together like the mud of hell
and you left the best part of your twenty-fifth year
scattered along a Fallujah roadside
while some Senator’s kid sped drunk
through Georgetown safely wrapped inside
a Hummer with thicker plate
than the one laying on top
of that red-headed corporal from Georgia
that always had a spare smoke or two.
I don’t look in your eyes when I give you a dollar,
because that way I still have the balls
to feel good about myself.
Dancing with Fireflies
She stands by the edge of the yard
barely out of earshot
(at least that’s what she’s pretending
just like I’m pretending not to notice
she’s pushing boundaries again)
and whirls round and around,
sturdy baby-fat legs grapevining
on her twirling tippy-toes,
blonde curls dancing in the dusklight
until she collapses,
wreathed in giggles and grass stains,
laughing up at the starlight starbright
first star she sees tonight