By: R.T. Castleberry

Reaching Through Ice

Secured in this viewing chair,
slow healing in another’s home,
the new year brings erosion rain.
Through terrace glass,
sweatered against the frost,
Hennessy in the tea
I watch afternoon fall.
Tastes of pain meds, sweet cereal
coat my mouth.
Bookmarked through The Savage God,
I manage melancholy with a movie.
Ignored, the cell phone
soft-trills its notifications.
Locked down,
film credits rolling,
I zip the sweater closed,
fill the brandy cup higher.
Ice shatters an oak bough as
I open the merciless book.

WALKING THE RUINS

Daybreak is 5am:
drought-broken streets,
static clouds of a negative sky,
insinuations of eviction chairs
tossed on scorched grass.
I‘ve never earned or
learned a settling place.
Carrying a nomad’s tattoo,
all my references bend to
Beale Street dandy,
Raylan Givens gunfighter.
New voice sounding like the old,
I keep a list of my dead
like a warming scarf–
father, best friend, road poet.

When I go, I check the weather,
play the Favored Angel game
with pocket coins, loose cash.
Half-hammered from Maker’s Mark,
microwave road food,
I check into a double
at the songwriter’s motel,
check my phone for rounders,
fall asleep between the beds.
Sunset evenings begin with
bacon & egg sandwiches,
grease-cutter bourbon and Coke.
Working my Jimmy Reed energy,
I load a Philly blunt, roll my car
looking for a card game,
live music in a club.

Things you learn defining
a vagabond path consume the days:
grievance, minor forms of misery.
There are days a Black girl
tosses me a tangerine, fresh and cold;
days a dark rye and cheese, ham
cut from the bone is work’s reward.
A fighter pilot in a diner tells me,
“In the desert, we took everything.
I stole Charley Patton’s pony.
A silver saddle, too.”
As satellite radio plays “Killing Floor,”
I push away from the wall.
Excused by Wolf’s line,
I linger over, “I shoulda quit…,”
tilt a black cherry Stetson
towards the jitney-side doors.

Third Car From the Light

Inkblot ridge of rain clouds
mars a workman’s afternoon,
teasing drizzle splashing
ladder’s steps, a drying roof.
As gunmen pay their respects
to the county sheriff,
old black men at the market–
fifth of wine, 40 oz. in hand,
laugh and grin, lounge against
gas pumps, lean into
driver’s side windows.
Old Lincolns, new Nissans
pause in the parking lot.
Four-way traffic drags through
construction warning,
bus stop campsites overflow.
Standing at streetside,
checking my jacket for
matches and spare magazines,
I wipe the Tecate can clean,
step into my car.
Heavy hauling Wednesday,
I’ll follow highway 18-wheelers
to check the taquerias I manage
near the Navy yard.

###

R.T. Castleberry, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has work in Caveat Lector, San Pedro River Review, Glassworks Magazine, Silk Road and Literary Yard. Internationally, he’s had poetry published in Canada, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France, New Zealand, Portugal, the Philippines, India and Antarctica.