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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)

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Making Circles in Darkness

on the loss of my mother

Sometimes going through the motions
is enough; it’s almost like living.

Sometimes it’s too much effort
to cross the room for heat,
so I watch the snow fall through
the cracked window,
the layers building up
of snow and blankets
as warmth slips out
through the opening.

I’m drunk on my own grief,
and my hand makes lazy circles
in the air to amuse me.
Life doesn’t mean anything;
it never did.

Sometimes there exists in me
a tempest that cannot be contained.
I rebuild and shift things,
furiously dig through the snow
and in the soil,
looking for a place to deposit
the excess energy
and the memories.

Life clings, meaningless
and important.

One day I will forget to feel the pain,
I’ll laugh without stopping myself
and I’ll let the flowers bloom
without shutting myself away
where I cannot see them.

The lazy circles amuse me;
I’m an infant again,
motherless and cold.
Each day feels different,
experienced in ways
I always feared.

I wonder how I’ll remember joy
when it tries to come back in,
and I wonder if I’ll want it
after the years I’ve spent in darkness.

Life clings, heavy
and beautiful.

Notes

Written 7 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Making Circles in Darkness” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Dolphin

for Kevin Davis

We could see you were a dolphin
in your dolphin skin,
but we did not understand
what made you laugh,
and what dolphins do.
We found boxes to put you in,
secondhand and raggedy,
boxes you refused to get in.
You were a dolphin!
Dolphins don’t belong
in boxes.
We were duplicitous cephalopods,
our lives murky black clouds of ink.
But you were a dolphin,
and we couldn’t change
ourselves into anything.
You are still swimming,
singing your dolphin songs
and you are still laughing,
while our withered bodies
lose their ink.
So often, we wish
we were dolphins too.

Written 2 February 2020

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

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Stardust

There were once less vibrant goddesses,
their white glowing forms cloaked
in dust and chunks of rock,
still warm from the kiln.

This was before the invention of hue,
before the creation of color,
when stone shrouds were all the rage
and ice clouds were a favorite accessory.

I was there, unformed and silent,
racing through voids,
watching as dancing turned nothing
into something,
great giants who each took in many
multitudes who will never know
what it is to be born
and reborn,
to be torn apart,
rebuilt,
to exist so briefly
and so infinitely.

Now the colors are vivid,
garish at times.
We are all part of one goddess or another,
limbs and organs,
clouds of debris clinging to their bodies.

Look at my feet;
I’m dancing.
Look at my feet;
I’m dancing.
Look at my feet;
I’m dancing.

Notes

Written 5 December 2019 & 27 January 2020 Payne County, Oklahoma

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

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It’s finally out.  And I can finally get some sleep!  Here are the links to my book on Amazon.  I think it looks so much better in paperback, but there is a Kindle version available.

Amazon Paperback

Amazon Kindle

If you don’t already know what’s up, here’s a little backstory.  I’ve been writing since I was a child.  My first poem that I remember was written in October 1988 when I was 9 years old.  When I was 12, my teacher accused me of plagiarism because she didn’t think a child could write.  I don’t say that to congratulate myself at all.  I’m not even sure if that was worth all the aggravation.  It has been lost to time.  It was titled Paige and it was about the life of a woman who never finds happiness.  But I imagine the actual poem would seem completely juvenile now.

I started writing in earnest in college and since 1997 I have written consistently.  While I veer off into other projects, like short stories or novels, I find poetry that I always return to poetry and enjoy writing it.  Over the years, I’ve developed my own style.  That is a good thing.  The problem is that I also haven’t had serious critique of my work since I graduated from college, so I don’t actually know how my work is seen by others.  I’m amazed that I’ve managed to spend the better part of 20 years unwilling to share my work for fear of rejection.  And I really should have managed that sooner!

When I lost Mom last year, the first thing I did was crawled into a metaphorical hole for 9 months.  I wanted to disappear because I didn’t understand how one can live without his mama, and I’m not too proud to say it.  It also brought a few things into focus.  One of those things was letting go of the expectations and opinions of others.  Now, I mean of me as a person, not my work.  That is a lesson that has been taught to me my entire life, but sometimes things need to cook for a while.

So, now I’ve got a book.  I worked diligently over the summer to get it done.  My garden is sad and neglected, my roommate is sad and neglected, and my family… well, they are too busy to have noticed, but if they had I imagine they would feel sad and neglected.  For this first collection of poems (because I don’t want it to be the last!), I wanted to focus on a few things: 1. Poems with very specific references to people.  It’s not that I won’t write that way in the future, but I wanted to give people the words I had written for them before getting into other subjects.  2. Epitaphs.  I’ve lost a lot of people and I often have things to say about that.  I’d like to get through a lot of those I’ve had lying around, but there are many more.  3. My very favorite poems I’ve written… that aren’t too scandalous.  I get it, family will buy this first book. They will even hang on for a second, but by the third they won’t be too fussed about it.  So, I have actually created a plan where my third book is where I completely let my hair down.  That does mean I have to do at least 2 more books, but it also sounds like I’m censoring myself.  In a way I am, but I’m not completely either.  I want my prudish great aunt to be able to have something she will never read, but that won’t make her blush too much if she decides to open it up.

Last thing I will say about it, I decided to make notes on each poem.  Rather than include them in the actual printed book, they can be found here… in the writing tab, or at this link.Continue Reading

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1975

I’m sizing him up and putting him
in the him-shaped space left
so long before I was born.
I didn’t call him anything,
but sometimes he is everything
and there are nights when I sit alone
with the stars and wonder
if I make him proud.

21 September 2019

Notes

Written 21 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “1975” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading