LITTLE PUNK
Megan Mealor
The wrathful kid with the fierce fingers
and a penchant for torturing ants won’t
stop breaking eggs on the sidewalk, won’t
respond to the vigilant old lady shouting
from across the street in the kooky green
house with lace for blinds. He splatters the
eggs like a delirious Picasso from four or five
cartons I’m sure his mother will miss. I think
his father works twelve hours a day, six days
a week, in some nearly-extinct job better left
to computers who don’t have two mortgages
out on some disfigured dark eyesore with a
leaf-choked lawn and a tornado-prone roof
that blocks out the sunrise. I think his mother
cleans the kitchen counter twenty times a day.
The trampoline sags like a heartless sonnet.
The basketball net unthreads in self-pity.
Splat! Now there are no more eggs to scramble
in silent, screaming testaments, and the kid
heads home for another sapless sandwich
of a supper.
HERMIT
I have grown a little eccentric,
a little discontent, I suppose,
since I moved my corner rocking chair
to the very center of the den
near the growling, grinning heater
to cover the carpet’s balding spot
and began turning the volume to heaven
to drown out the absence of snoring
in the fireplace glow of yellow-orange
and flashing turquoise tongues.
I must admit,
I have also grown
a little unnerved
by the eerie reverie
of snow-silent cats.
Megan Denese Mealor has been published widely, and is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her debut poetry collection, Bipolar Lexicon, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. She lives in Jacksonville, FL with her partner and son.
“Little Punk” was originally published in Deep South Magazine, April 2014, and “Hermit” was originally published in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, April 2015.