Locomotion Read Free Page B

all the pigeons come swooping and flying above us—back and forth and up and down making those croaky pigeon sounds. Those days I’m not scared about pigeon crap on my head because the way they fly—just slow back and forth and the sun getting all bright orange behind them and them making those sounds that after a while sound a little bit like a song—all of it together makes you look up into the sky and believe in everything you ever wanted to believe in. Especially with Todd standing there waving that white sheet and his brown face all broken out in the biggest smile you ever seen on a teenager.

SOMETIMES POEM
    Miss Edna gets her paycheck the second Friday
of every month and we go to C-Town. Sometimes
the Twinkies go on sale three for five dollars and
Miss Edna says
Get three. You know how we love ourselves some
Twinkies, Lonnie
And her smile gets big and so does mine.
We go up to the cash register with all our food.
When I put the Twinkies on the counter, the checkout
lady says
I guess your son likes Twinkies, huh?
And Miss Edna looks at me sideways.
Then she smiles and says
Yeah, I guess he does.

WAR POEM
    Miss Edna got two other sons—Rodney and Jenkins.
Jenkins’s off fighting in the war.
Rodney, he lives upstate and once a month
Miss Edna goes up there and visits him. She packs up
fried chicken and potato salad and
makes a pound cake. Puts it all
in a shopping bag and the shopping bag smells
like lots of good things.
She leaves two chicken legs and some potato
salad on a plate for me when
I don’t
go with her but sometimes
I do
and we take a bus all the way up where there’s
mountains and grass everywhere.
Lots of trees too.
    Â 

Miss Edna can’t visit her other son, so she prays.
I find her like that sometimes—on her knees in her
room with her hands
pressed together, her eyes closed.
Dear Lord, I heard her say once
Keep Jenkins safe and don’t let too many people die in this
war.
    Â 
    The war’s on the other side of the world.
    But Jenkins is fighting in it.
And Miss Edna’s praying about it.
So I guess it’s the same as if it was right here
in our city
in our house
in Miss Edna’s room
Everywhere.

GEORGIA
    Ever been south? We
used to go all the time. That’s
another poem.

NEW BOY POEM II
    Cloudy out and just a little bit of rain spraying
across our faces, some kids got their coats
hanging from their heads. Some shivering but we all
in the school yard ’cause the lunchtime teacher
stuck her hand
out the door, frowned and said Okay, go on out, I guess
    Â 
    New boy’s across the yard talking
to a little girl look like him, she
got high-water pants on too
only hers are pink and she got brown shoes that look
about a hundred years old. Her hair in four
big braids like Lili likes to wear sometimes maybe
she’s Lili’s same age. New boy puts his arm
around her shoulders and they just stand there like
that looking out over the yard. Watching
them I feel something in the back of my throat
close up and choke at me. Then slide on
down to my stomach and make itself some tears.

TUESDAY
    No rain but the sky
is this strange color—silver almost and the sun
white—like this white ball behind a piece
of silver foil. You could look
right at the sun and not go blind.
It’s watery like that.
Safe to look at today.
    Â 
    That’s what I’m thinking when Eric
comes up to where I’m sitting
in the school yard ’cause it’s lunchtime
The kind of day
when I don’t want
to do nothing
but go somewhere and write
Writing makes me remember.
It’s like my whole family comes back again
when I write. All of them right
here like somebody pushed the Rewind button
And that’s what I’m writing when Eric
comes up to where I am—in the far back
of the school yard
Writing and eating my grilled cheese sandwich I snuck
from the cafeteria. What you doing? Eric
wants to know. He’s wearing a leather jacket
like