Poetry by David C. Porter

Well into adulthood, he would jump when he saw
his own shadow. He would see the tombstone was blank,
and not know what to do. His son told him there was a ghost
with them in the car. It was wearing a faint shadow, supposedly,
and hospital shoes. There are stories about ancient dams bursting,
and whole villages being washed away. He imagines, compulsively,
that these stories are probably all historical and true. A dim
kind of light arrests him. He tries to concentrate. Where did I
leave my keys? He looks in the oven. It seems to go all the way
back. The warmth feels like an invitation. He remembers he used
to be smaller. “There must be another exit around here
somewhere.” What was his name then? A boy in his class
pushes his face down. In his mouth he tastes blood. Your father
was as big as a house, his mother would tell him. When she
said this, it made him imagine a beautiful nightmare.

At the store he catches signs of neglect. The big letters
are backwards on some of the signs. A jar breaks its glass
and red evidence spills out across everything. It is his ultimate
dream to be rid of these fragments and live in complete devotion
to the set of unknowable laws whose presence he feels surrounding
him at all times. He closes his eyes and sees his father in shade
in a wood-paneled room. On the wall is a painting of a man
with no clothes. What was that sound? He rubs a hand around
the basics of his face. The dark castle. Once, he caught a glimpse
through a swinging gymnasium door. There was an older boy and a
younger girl. That night, weird shapes presented themselves
in vivid colors on the ceiling of his room. This must be
some kind of sick joke, he thought… a needle snaps
in the forest. He builds a campfire. “I’m sure whatever it was
is gone now.” His ideas have become more urgent in recent days.

In the crypt, he watches the cobwebs grow. A bat angles itself
across his aperture, lengthwise, and his son pounds on the shape
of the cellar door. What do these words mean? The bat transforms
into a tropical bird, but he dismisses the idea. He sees that his hand is
like his face, a sad message he can’t decode. He remembers
the confines of the oven. There’s a family above him, and a kind
of enormous, crushing tide. This much he has determined. The only
thing restraining you is your total lack of character, a teacher
at the school had told him. He had been unsure if this was meant
as praise. On another path, the teacher shows him a set of postcards
concerning some ideas about discipline and restraint. As this version
of himself, he will will feel neutrally about them. “Please, you don’t
have to do this.” Yesterday, he listened to the radio dissolve
into wet, glottal sounds. It seems to him like noise is all there is
these days. The swamp creature beckons. When did this happen?