by Gary Beaumier
Somewhere mother holds you against her breasts in a Chicago flat
-- the war winding down --
while she warms a bottle and tests the milk on the tender of her wrist;
“you are my sunshine,” she sings.
Somewhere you sit in a quilted coat
upon a tricycle in front of a red house,
and later still your fastball hisses over
home plate into the strike zone.
Somewhere a man says we all derive from stars,
while a holy person declares we will live forever.
You still succor your fractious babies as you pace a midnight floor.
Only just now a distant planet watches you bend to help a student
or soften your embrace to your wife in the utter dark.
Somehow you glide out of a fifth floor hospital room into a painted twilight,
into streams of cars and trucks and exhaust
as your family holds your emancipated body and rides with you to the edge of life
and somewhere a medical student
peels back what remains of you
to learn the human clockwork.
From the Author
I have a degree in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I have been a finalist for the Luminaire Award for my poem titled “Ten Cents” as well as the Joy Bale Boone Award for my poem “The Migratory Habits of Dreams in Late Autumn”. My chapbook From My Family to Yours has been published by Finishing Line Press. My poem "The Rio Grande" was nominated for the “Best of the Net” award and I won first prize for Streetlight Magazine for my poem Night Train to Paris. I was a finalist for the New Millenium Writings for my poem “From Certain Distances in Space I Still See My Brother”. I was recently shortlisted for the Charles Bukowski contest from Raw Arts Review for my poem “Ghosting”. I was also a finalist for Wingless Dreamers contest for the poem “The Complete History of Our First Kiss”. I won the the Love Poetry contest with Flying Ketchup Press and was a finalist for my poem “Places I Have Known” for The Raw Arts Review. My latest book of poetry Dented Brown Fedora was published by Uncollected Press. I have been a teacher, a bookstore manager and a gandydancer for one summer a long time ago. I used to build wooden sailboats. I once taught poetry in a woman's prison.