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Skyline & McElroy

These spaces were once open wide;
we explored the details for hours.
They seem to darken and cower;
now they shrink, wither, and divide.

Free, we stretched our wings fearlessly.
We never thought we’d have bad luck
even after Christine was struck
and Rusty was rushed urgently,

tire and concrete in his face,
to the E.R. for doctors’ care.
We’d still head on bikes anywhere
while those two recovered en brace.

Oh joy! to feel that wind rushing,
to ride down hills foolheartedly,
to find the paths left secretly,
to forget near tragic crushing.

Now, Gayane’s final act is all
the excitement I dare to take.
The shrinking neighborhoods forsake
my inner child — they’ve turned small.

Notes

Written 15 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Skyline & McElroy” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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My Native Valley

Lacosha! you kept passing by.
We never picked bright yellow
flowers in the fields on Spring mornings,
and we never chased rabbits
through people’s backyards on
Autumn afternoons.
I’m still looking for words,
my voice muffled by fear,
to invite you to my birthday party.

Notes

Written 15 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “My Native Valley” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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New Kids on the Block

If the spaces under the highway
had been a passage to a great
underground city, I’d still be there
living among the mole people,
still listening to your sister’s cassettes.

It was always over as soon as it started,
and I longed for you for years after.
The gas station stopped selling gas;
it’s just as well. I don’t drive that way
anymore and I don’t want the salty chips
we used to get before spending afternoons
listening to music at your house.

You’ve grown too great for me to see
and I’ve started shrinking into the cracks,
barely leaving a mark behind to find.
I’ll see you at the next protest
on the steps of the state capital.
I wonder if I’ll still be visible by then.

Notes

Written 15 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “New Kids on the Block” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)Continue Reading

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Riley

There’s a rabbit hutch
still waiting for us, unmolested
behind a stranger’s house
on the walk home.
The rabbits are still there;
let’s return to tell them stories
and sing Shenandoah.

Written 15 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma

Brian Fuchs, “Riley” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)Continue Reading

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Cakewalk

The mint’s taken over
and we just watched it,
eating sandwiches, piled
with fresh tomatoes picked
from the garden.
Love is letting a plant take
over a meticulously tended
bed for a child’s whim.
The tomatoes are gone,
and the mint reminds me
that things used to be
full of everything good.

Notes

Written 15 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Cakewalk” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Legg-Calvé-Perthes Cocoon

I’m more reptilian than Russian.
My parts have grown back,
and I’ve shed myself so many times,
expecting somehow to find smaller
versions of myself.

I haven’t grown smaller.

I test my legs often,
waiting for cracks to form
and for the new leg beneath
to emerge, emaciated and pale,
like it was the last time.

I thought I was a butterfly once,
and I fantasized about emerging
beautiful like the people I’m not.

I haven’t emerged beautiful.

Reinvention is either a myth
or a luxury of youth.
I tried so many times,
but I am more like myself now
than I ever was before.

It’s been thirty-five years
since the casts fixed my form
and my legs were allowed
to regrow.
I’m still waiting for it
to happen again,
knowing it won’t,
wishing it would.

I’m not so filled with new versions
as I was before,
and I’ve given up on beauty.
It was alway a lie anyway.
I long to know where
the beautiful people’s cracks form,
and what they expected to become.

Notes

Written 7 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Legg-Calvé-Perthes Cocoon” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

Our hands were calloused once,
the birds would flit in fields,
chasing grasshoppers off perches.

Those fields were plowed
by grandfathers,
by their grandfathers,
tilled by their horses,
and planted with our foods
in an Oklahoma freshly wounded
by wars and broken treaties.

We were busy running from
countries that no longer felt like home,
too busy rebuilding our families
to notice how the soil we dug
had been taken from a people
whose lives had become
defined by their deaths,
a people who never had the luxury
to find themselves too busy to care.

Still, the birds respected us then,
in our collective mourning.
They were here before,
in an uninhabited and hostile land.
They were here when we marched
our shame into this place,
when it was easier to pretend that
some people aren’t worthy of respect.
If they knew the truth,
they never showed it.

I wonder if flycatchers tell the tales,
if they gather to hear about the time
before the fenceposts,
when the fields were filled with
butterflies and grasshoppers.
I wonder if they cast us as the villains,
if they can see who we really are.
I wonder when they learned about us,
when they began to see our cruelty.

They are moving northward,
the fields still full of food,
away from the children
of the children of the children,
too many generations to understand
this place or to love the land,
away from the deceptions,
away from the delusions,
away from the cowardice.

I’m waiting for Spring,
and I’m watching the fields
for the dancing grey birds,
while they still visit us here,
and I wonder what we have learned,
and how much we still lie to ourselves.

Notes

Written 7 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Scissor-tailed Flycatcher” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)