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MARK LEE WEBB // Three Poems
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My First Time on Stage
I walk inside the Women’s Wing Seven shower stall and the Director tells me to play-act like a Knight of Swords – the tarot that always rushes in – and meet April’s tethered scion who’s been lying on cold red tiles since the hot water ran out thirty minutes ago I find her in a puddle think There’s not even a full moon I hope they send a sorcerer conjuring camellias They’ll make a mess too I have to mop drop pretty pink pastel petals all over the ground April spies me juggling stopped watches You new here hon? gotta cigarette? gotta light? Everything is Borrowed your shoes your air your shadow. Pick your blouse pants dress shirt skirt from the slop chest. Look at Tommy – today he’s wearing Lucy’s mom’s bell bottoms, somebody’s sister’s halter top, and flip flops – right, Welcome to Saint Pete Beach, left, Margaritaville. Tommy, who occasionally borrows nightmares from his transistor radio when he hides in the closet after missing morning meds. The Idea of Surfing I live like a hodad in a board-and-batten shack above the dunes, with a flea market marlin nailed over my front door. I glued a fisherman’s net and Spiraling Wentletraps to my bedroom walls. If you came to visit, chances are dirty plates and a few longneck Coors half drunk would be sitting on the table next to my bed, along with several Spiny Jewel Boxes I saved just for you. If you came to visit, sounds of amped kids bottom turning after dropping into rollers would roust me from last night’s binger. I’d prop myself up, glance at you, then shrug. You here? Well, gotta light? I’d remark on corduroy swell lines, how the waves was really firing. I’d make fun of all them clucked frubes how they’re afraid of being caught inside eating a heavy, afraid of grubbing and falling in the soup. I woulda told you I tried it once, maybe twice, but they was rude, called me a leech. I was just needing to borrow some wax. If you came to visit, you woulda remembered how I always talked about surfing how I thought itidbe bitchin’, but I never liked the feeling of my bare feet on an August-hot beach. How I never liked swallowing saltwater, neither. How mostly I just laid around. Yeah, if you had come to visit I woulda taken a long drag on a Camel then exhaled real slow-like, rolled over in my bed, and gazed out the window. What’s that fuzzy- looking thing out there? The ocean? I never really liked the ocean. Then I woulda turned my head away. |
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Mark Lee Webb is the Editor and Publisher of A Narrow Fellow Journal of Poetry. He recently received nominations for both a Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets. He was a 2013 Fellow at The Renaissance House Writing Residency on Martha’s Vineyard. His poems have been published in numerous journals, both in the United States and abroad.
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