It Was April
Carla McGill
Morning sun splashed on the great
mountain, oozed onto my child life,
and the day started. Train rumbled past,
crows darted from pepper to eucalyptus,
the town’s men now at the steel mill
for an hour already.
I don’t know what I did all day,
or why I recall a body in the field,
animated flies, carrion birds
in the distance; that morning
watching Grandpa pour his coffee
into the saucer, then balance it and drink.
This is the alluvial plain, land of trains,
whiskey bottles, hammers. Comforting
sound of washing machine, then clothes
on the line, bleached white sheets,
Granny napping while Pal and I
played by the swings.
Running my fingers across marbles
my dad placed in the cement wall,
cat’s eye, purees. Ants lining up
the edge, all the gravel clean, dry.
Who knows if someone found it,
but I told no one, just ignored it
since the winds blasted across
the extended fields like strange
beasts set to destroy us, dread
at every barbecue weekend, women
in ironed shorts, men drinking beer
in the lacerating sun.
CARLA MCGILL’S work has been published in The Atlanta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Shark Reef, Euphony Journal, The Hungry Chimera, Neologism Poetry Journal, DASH Literary Journal, The Penmen Review, Cloudbank, Paragon Journal, Burningword, The Alembic, California Quarterly, Waxing & Waning, Broad River Review and others. She writes poetry and fiction.