Carrie Goertz-Flores has published work in New Plains Review, and has work forthcoming in Red Dirt Forum: A Journal of Contemporary Literature, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a poetry collection, Solanaceae, which seeks to bridge the gap between the botanical world and modern human experience. She lives in rural Oklahoma with her husband and four dogs who serve as dedicated editors and muses for her work. 

Shrapnel

Dedicated to my father.

His face was worn with trenches while his gaze was guarded by barbed wire fences,
Yet beyond all those lines lay an abandoned field of friends and rusting wheels,
A battle no longer of bullets but shards so small no one would ever think to notice;
How they stuck then sunk so far into the mind even he had almost forgotten for a time.

Scraping and scrapping pieces of his life along with almost every peace of mind,
They lay like the mines lost long ago in wars no one remembers until they detonate.

For some those metal teeth burrow deeper, shell cased in scars of anger and regret,
The tissue too thick for any surgeon and the surgery worse than the first war crime.
Maybe for the lucky few whose draft number they drew, the pieces begin to surface;
Perhaps they even breach with fallen comrades and the white eyes of their enemies…

But memory is a funny bitch of a thing when carried on a shaft, shell, or bomb;
Shrapnel may burrow or it may breach but nothing can ever make it dissolve.

The Suitcase

We heard that jeep limpin’ along, over the hills and somehow still not under one.
A custom clunker with age-enhanced leg room where the floorboards had rusted off,
That black and green ride baptized Camo-Mile, how she hacked on her own exhaust –
Or maybe that was just Aunt Sammy with her Category 5 smoker’s cough.

We watched her climb out then sway and swagger down the rocky drive,
A bloated bag swung in one hand and a square suitcase cradled in the other.
I opened the screen door wide and she handed the paper bag to my mother,
Then bumpin’ past and still hugging that cask, she made the table on a winded sigh.

As Sammy insisted, that suitcase was christened the centerpiece over the honey ham,
Towering like a great white behemoth, sporting a spout for a tail and plastic trunk handle,
While its keeper kept us dazzled with stories of her cats and that long planned trip to France;
She was still talking as we cleared, but helped by finger cleanin’ three plates of pumpkin pie.

That evening all but one gathered in the den to claim their turf and surf the cable channels.
Still I heard it over the rattle of rusty memories and reckless booms of political commentary,
A sudden clink from the kitchen and then a long pour that turned into a longer lonely drawl,
Cup in hand, Aunt Sam sat in time to cackle at the news that Paul was now ready to pass on.

With no on left but me, she finally snored into the dreams that only her suitcase could still bring –
Though she still wore that dreamcatcher charm and the golden cross it had tangled and caught on.
Finally, my dad carried in that Wal-mart bag that still remained packed and crumbled without care:
Panties, pills, and toothpaste pokin’ out, we set it by her fetal form with hopes and continued prayers.

But that suitcase now it hardly sloshed – how she’d solo unpacked that box of Franzia Sauvignon.
Still, Dad and I had our doubts that her latest cardboard carry-on had indeed come from Avignon.

Leaky Faucet

My mind’s a kitchen faucet
All day filling needy cups
But at night not quite off
Drips are my own dreams
Clinging to the cold sink
I must try to remember…
I must try to save from the daily drain.