Red Mist

Home is but a footprint
hardened deep in his heart.
Not a word from family
since he left Georgia for Texas
two decades ago as a teen,
not a chance he’ll seek them out—
pride tenacious as nutmeat to a shell;
his disease, the stain on the fingers.

Some nights his ache for love
is so labored, he wakes
with blood on his tongue,
a sour excretion on the sheets.
He lies for hours in moonlight,
a barren stretch of rock,
watching clouds murk away the glow.

Mornings, with arms
that can barely lift his torso,
with legs unsteady without a cane,
he stumbles to the bathroom
and slouches naked before a mirror.
Though the flesh is sexless,
a patchwork of sags and sores,
he puckers his lips
like a grand Southern belle,
stares disaster in the face,
and reaches for his favorite lipstick.

 

Scott Wiggerman is author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets (finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters’ Helen C. Smith Memorial Award), Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships; and editor of several volumes, including the best-selling Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry (I & II) and three anthologies of Southwestern poetry, most recently, Weaving the Terrain.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.