James Thomas Miller
POEM FOR GATOR HINDS
Now, you rest, a seaweed nest of black curls on a dirty pillow,
tended to by the same woman who last year trenched
a gash down the side of your thick skull with a butcher knife
that took thirty stitches and three interns to hem. Try to forget.
Summer looms laid-off and thin on floated loans.
You will never read this, and if you did, I’d be embarrassed.
Sleep well; by September, you might walk right, if ever.
Perpetually late at eight am, you drove a bondoed Mercedes
built sometime around the fall of Jimmy Swaggart.
Red-eyed, grinning, you swanked across the shop yard
in crisp pressed indigo Dickies to spew a litany of excuses:
back-hoe explosion on Main, stolen porch, tainted grits.
You could sell the stink off fish, plough double anyone else.
Two weeks ago, your mouth ran out of checks in an alley
beside Club Ebony’s neon pink cinder block stoop.
Grabby and half-lit on gin, you slid the wrong hand
on the wrong woman, then spat an apology ending bitch.
Her date curdled your knees with a lead pipe and left
you soused in blood between burnt oil drums until
two apathetic EMTs thumped you on a gurney and cruised
the long route back to South Sunflower County Hospital.
Gator, you are a rag bastard, but you deserve better than this.
