Two Poems by Jean Voneman Mikhail

Breath

Tent of my kid pitched in the backyard,
blown over, collapsing in on himself.
Tent stake through his heart.

I’ve left him to the rain, again,
grass blades stuck to his back,
huffing a billowy paper bag of breath.

A baggie of cut triangular sandwiches.
A baggie of blow. A baggie of weed.
Holy trinity of school lunches.

I have fed him to live to build
fingers for sandwiches and fiddle.
I have opened his Oreo black eyes

when they wouldn’t open.
I’ve unscrewed the lids,
and looked into the frosted eye whites

and scraped him of sweetness.
I fear I’ve made a mess of him.

I gave him sippy cups with blow holes.
Juice boxes with snorting straws.
Straws to stick up a turtle’s nose.

Once, he cared about
all the animals.

He cried for the neighbor’s kitten dead
in winter, fed on snowy moonlit milk.

He wanted the world to be kinder.

Is there any way to save him, now,
from chasing that washed up baggie
turning inside out in the waves

long ago down a stretch of beach,
a baggie filled with ocean water,
safety locked, zipped full of air?
His breath.

* 

LGLG

Dear God, with your capital G,
I see what you’re up to,
counting bodies down in Portsmouth,

Ohio, of all places to leave him.
God, listen to me, you can’t
have him all to yourself in an alley.

Your wrought iron doors,
windowless eyes bricked in,
having ceased watching over him,
haven’t you? How

would I ever know? Quietly,
cable wires cross this city,
trains rock themselves
to sleep at the end of the line.

But where is he, where is my son?

If he must die, if he must die,
how with dignity, how—
with forgiveness, how without shame?
How do I keep him from death
if death is what he chooses?

Should I lie down with him
and die, too, on the crescent moon
sidewalk of what was to be
our first total solar eclipse,

For my son, for my son’s life,
I’d give just about anything
except what I can no longer give.
No shelter. No food. No more.

God, no.

What kind of insanity is this?
Let go, let God. LGLG.
Give me a break.
I’ve given enough.

*

Jean Voneman Mikhail lives in Athens, Ohio, where she first came to study for a Masters in Creative Writing. Many years and a few kids later, she now writes more than ever. She has published in Sheila Na Gig Online, The Northern Appalachian Review, Pudding Magazine and other poetry journals and anthologies.