MARK McKAIN
OLD KNIFE
One
bone thin
blade honed
by Father's
whetstone grinding
like the harrass
and harangue he used
to skewer all I said or did.
He could pick me clean
carve liver, heart, spleen,
meld me into his favorite soup
slice in music from an amputated guitar,
ground sassafrass leaves,
books, conquistadors, alligator gar.
With it
he spread mustard,
horseradish on sandwiches
we took on Sunday trips
to rain forest,
bayou, desert, beach,
munched at countless
historical monuments
to courageous men
who slashed their way
through the wilds
of my childhood.
He even whittled me
a whistle from a stick.
He added outrage, confinements, doubts,
scraped in solitude,
boiled eggs and lemon slices
served up siblings
wounds that healed
harder than black stone.
After 30 years,
I chop pickles into egg salad,
pack sandwiches to visit
a roadside monument
still feel the rasp of steel
working down to the bone.
SUNBURN
I submerge with mask in snorkel
to spy on her body
as she plunges into the aqua green water
peels it back to reveal
the white flesh
below the tan line.
My eyes burn with chlorine.
I study the streams
running down her legs and stomach.
At thirteen I want every girl
with budding breasts.
My back and shoulders never seemed to tan --
only to burn, freckle and peel. Julia
teased, laughed, brushes me underwater,
but after swimming practice
that could make us guppies, dolphins or sharks
she hurried off to her tennis lessons.
I lay on a short white towel
she sunned on a lounge chair. I gaze up,
squint at her aqua top, brown legs,
her ankle with a thin gold bracelet.
The tops of my feet are sunburned.
Julia stands on my shoulders.
I tremble, hold her ankles.
Her feet shift unsteadily on my collarbones.
"Turn around. Not so fast.
Walk toward the deep end," she says.
My head barely above water,
she jumps off to continue
the water ballet with her girlfriends.
Her weight shoves me under.
Her toes dig into my reddened shoulders.
My skin is hot and tender.
Mother tries to put on solarcane
and sun tan lotion,
but at the end of the day
my shoulders are redder and hotter
feel raw and painful
beneath my polyester shirt
I sit at my desk and read
Moll Flanders and Madame Bovary
and think I know it all.
Julia and I said our awkward good-byes
at the end of summer.
She was transferring to Broadmore High
I was going to middle school.
She touches my shoulder
and quickly pulls her hand away
as she touches a puffy sun blister
on the tip of my collarbone.
I know nothing,
only that I want her,
and would never be
this sunburned again.
Mark McKain
© 1997
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