by Greg McBride

Buddies for Life
     summer 1961

Squealing rubber slick out of McDonald’s,
our gang of four sixteens, two cars, tears north–
east on 413 toward Langhorne, PA,
two yellow lines from south to Bristol Bridge.
I’m propped on a pillow in full command
of my father’s red Fury, fins flaming
the Saturday night. Behind, big buddy
Eddie sprawls across the suicide seat
of a Galaxie, Bob manning the wheel.
We’re ProKeds and gasoline, wind–billowed
collars, single–file on a two–lane road
to Philly pizza, pool hall, girls, who knows?
We do the do–si–do, the pass–lane–pass,
we swim the road’s smooth ebb and flow, we whoop
and holler. Let’s Twist Again clamors from
AM radio. Under stars that flare
through the night sky’s scrim, our ketchup–stained jeans
jounce Chubby Checker’s beat. Crewcuts cruising,
tailpipes blurting, the Galaxie’s abreast
my Fury, noses ahead, and again,
again, Bob almost evades the ravine.

by Robert Kennedy

Listen. The key is turning
In the derelict lock.
Remember. The exile is strange
And knocks softly on the door,
Not wishing to disturb
The occupiers of his
Memory.

When a father beats
His child
The child belongs
To its father,
As a father belongs
To his motherland
Like the key which,
When turning in the lock,
Becomes the lock.
So, a father becomes
As a child
With sorrow
And the weight of a
Pause,
A snagging
Of the lock.

But I am buried
In mirthless laughter,
Like a moth in a smoking
Candle,
By the weight of
Motherness
In mother.
Mother is supreme, they say.
I hear only silence
And the soft quaking

Of self–sacrifice.
I belong to the ache
Of that silence.

Listen.
The comfort of that silence
Beckons you.
But it will
Bury you,
Silence you,
Kill you.

by Robert Kennedy

Once familiar objects turn hostile
In this cubic void of dark space.
Bloodless hands reach from angular sleeves,
My throat throbbing in jugular terror.
Feet, ready to kick,
Are tensed somewhere
On hard muscles.

Surfaces are hardened by the inky air
Flattened against the invisible wall.
Acute desperation is fanned
By an upward growth from the floor.

I know the room can be switched
Back to friendliness again,
But the switch is superimposed
On nothing. My hands frisk an
Invisible gown — my own exhalations.
If I could only find the door,
I could kick it — really hard.

Keys invade the lock, and with a jar,
The bed, the chair
And I take a step back,
Insipid, sickly, older
In the punishing, grey light.

The warder sees only stagnant remnants
Of order: a glass, a crust, blank paper.
I turn from his question to my sleep,
To the narrow envelope
Of my bed
And its beckoning black.

by M. P. Jones IV

Late in the darkness
startled by the sound of what
could have been the bleating
of a young calf the one
my father bottle fed
after we found his mother
at the edge of the field
the hay leaning heavy
with flecks of blood
and the red clay too hard
to bear the paw prints
already the vultures
had assembled for their
wake in the pines
with the sun bending
weary at noon’s stalk
her body growing ripe
as we dug the shallow pit
worn handles of the shovel
straining against the clay
with shadows from the field
moving into the treeline
we loaded the truck
and still later heading home
when we discovered
the fledgling owls living
in the oil can that hung
to the left of the cabin door
what little refuge we require.