here is a poem i was assigned to write about an old photo using the words “bat, instrument, flower, idiot, monk, and jellyfish”
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eighteen years old
billy plays the hum of his bike like an instrument.
a cigarette lands between middle and pointer finger
a small hen come home to roost.
he never quite grew as big as he liked to talk
so he stepped up to bat, socked the biggest boy in school, and said
“are we going to have a problem?”
when he met priscilla he gave up picking fights for flowers.
her dark hair trailed behind her in the hallway, tendrils of a slow jellyfish.
reverent as a monk
i open my grandpa's old yearbook to find the inscription from my grandma
“we’re just two idiots who got stuck behind the door when god gave out brains.”
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