POETRY BY TERRY SAVIOE
RAKE & SHOVEL
Behind sunshades,
an army inductee's pubescent
sister secrets her
two bloodshot eyes & tears
as she stretches out
across the scalding afternoon
sand of Oak Street Beach.
Nearby, immutable, gray-haired
chests & bellies ripen
like late-August watermelons
while the one o'clock
radio broadcast from CBS
war correspondents runs
through the Pentagon's account
of this day's war casualties
beneath the blue, untroubled
skies & within earshot
of the tears, the wailing, the bloody
screams from a yellow-
bonneted girl, perhaps three,
whose big brother won't
give her back the beach pail
or plastic rake & shovel
he's buried beneath the beach's
scorched sands. All about:
a sea of buttocks & biceps, nearly
frolicked into exhaustion,
cools now beneath red-&-green
striped sunbrellas
over transistor static.
Is this where the hour
glass runs dry?
Terry Savoie's work appears American
Poetry Review, The North American Review, Many Mountains
Moving, Poetry, Another Chicago Magazine and Ploughshares, as well
as a previous issue of BMR.
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