Outside Ken’s bedroom window
is a whale. Not a whale of a something
but a humpback, according to his Book
of Whales. His mom is screaming
because her garden of the month
is under it and its ajar mouth
and louvered shutter of baleen
are pressed against the kitchen
window where tomatoes redden
on the sill. Ken’s dad is on the horn
to whalers his fingers stopped on
in the Yellow Pages. As a backup he’s calling
the chainsaw rental place over on Broad.
Ken’s dad’s the practical one,
his mom, the hysterical one just like all
the families on the block with an only child.
——————–
Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning artist, having lived much of his life in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. He currently eats, sleeps, bicycles and writes from the family homestead in the mountains of northcentral Pennsylvania where he earns a living in advertising and is constantly trying to keep his barn from falling down. Over the years Charles has enjoyed publishing in Apalachee Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Faultline, Heliotrope, Oak Bend Review and Oxford Magazine, among others. New poems are forthcoming in Sawbuck and Avatar Review.
Thursday, July 1st, 2010 12:29 am
Categories: Archives, Issue 4.1
