Thursday, June 12, 2008

Featured Poet: Andrew Terhune

Andrew Terhune is a poet, father, and proud representative of the displaced South in Chicago. As a Columbia College Chicago MFA candidate, he has published work in Columbia Poetry Review, in other journals, and right here on O Sweet Flowery Roses. The baby in the photo is not him, but may very well be related to him. What's that? That's is daughter? Awww, cute, poetry website! Cute.

I Time Travel to Save You From So Many Stupid Things

You see, you have a donut

and from where you sit

my face looks like squish.

There are a few things I’d like to keep from the unspoiled world,

but I’m caught in an accidental nap

which does you no good.

I know, briefly of things that belonged to

my mother.

Lovely. Unreadable.

The shag carpet is full of plastic crumbs,

which is not why they trimmed your bangs.

Colic. Without shadow

Mine is a face that sits, pressed hard

like the plastic shell in the quarter machine

outside the grocery store, under polished

pockets of human beings wandering, walking backwards

and if we are lucky, emptiness arrives

and you will crack open the shell and throw

my face and watch it slide down, down

the glass and like a tide rushing through me

I like how it feels.

Grasshopper Police

Sister,

you’d pick the color,

and you showed me how to point my fingers like a gun

we’d shoot everything that was red.

You called it grasshopper police, lodged comfortably in the back of

our father’s Jeep Wagoneer. In the very back,

you remember – it had that false wooden paneling.

We did puzzles at the dining room table

in our first house on Crewe Street. I remember yellow walls – they almost

seemed stained and there were frilly edges on the tablecloth.

I couldn’t make anything fit, my small hands, as dull and useless as mittens.

You told me to ask Jesus for help.

Does your face still hurt from the rock I threw?

Walking the long walk from the bus stop, I was angry and you were there.

In Janesville

I am dressed like a clown.

What is this tender strangeness?

Temporary. Artificial heartbreak.

The warmth breathes over the theatre.

The concrete. The petal’s tear.

And your sour face again like a wilting flower.

What have I really done

and where do I begin?