Mealor

 

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.