CL BLEDSOE

 In the Cut

Sometimes, Dad would turn over an arrowhead,
but never when I was with him. My brother
found half a grinding stone but lost it when
 
the house burned. My sister’s meth-head ex
took Dad’s arrowheads. We walked the fields
checking for blight, places to water or spray.
 
Or I rode beside Dad over burned fields,
the tractor’s vibrations cancelling out any
speech. I wonder if he was just lonely. He
 
rarely spoke or acknowledged my running
commentary. I mostly tried to stay out of the way.
He eased along empty highways, the horizon
 
bluer than any water I’d ever seen. It was all
waiting; for rain, for the next field to slide into
view, for the unsatisfying lunch of Vienna sausages
 
or potted meat on stale Saltines, for Mom’s slow
death to be over.

Pulling Coffee Weeds

Pollen is just another kind of lust
in the air, which shows that everything
 
wants the same thing. I remember,
that day, not wanting to sit between my
 
brother and father and listen to
them bicker anymore, both of them

stunted in ways I couldn’t understand
yet. It was that old blue dodge
 
truck Dad drove for more than
20 years until somebody drove it
 
off a cliff. They set me out, my brother
saying it was too much for me,
 
and me wanting to be free and clear
not only of their words but the
 
stickiness of childhood. I took
a small scythe and set to cutting
 
thick coffee weeds in a soybean field.
They left me, took the water and
 
I imagined the breeze. Later, when
I’d cleared the field, another man
 
came with his grandson to shoot
cans. The gun was bigger than
 
the boy; he had to hold it between
his knees, hunched over. I got
 
yelled at for suggesting this might
not end well. Men sprawling in
 
the dying heat, their hackles up
from frustrating work, guns and
 
beer. I drank in the stink of it all,
trying to find something in it
I didn’t already know.

Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than twenty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, Trashcans in Love, Grief Bacon, and his newest, Driving Around, Looking in Other People's Windows, as well as his latest novels Goodbye, Mr. Lonely and the forthcoming The Saviors. Bledsoe co-writes the humor blog How to Even, with Michael Gushue located here: https://medium.com/@howtoeven His own blog, Not Another TV Dad, is located here: https://medium.com/@clbledsoe He’s been published in hundreds of journals, newspapers, and websites that you’ve probably never heard of. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.