High School Reunion
       

The cheap cocktails smudge the lens and
cudgel open a soft heart of skull

where once a rope swing in the elm, the river, the grill
bumped over at a barbeque,

where once toy tanks in the tall grass, little league
bubble gum, dusty August onion

rings, once itchy underpants, a note dropped, locker
combinations, slow walks holding

hands, growing up into crowbars and bats in the gas
station parking lot, the one .22 in the glove

compartment of a '78 Nova rusted blue with a hole
in the floor and a stolen tape deck

stereo of stone wash, Champion sweaters, hair
waiting in a can, masturbation

discussed in a city bus not long after
a bomb scare, teachers creeping on pretty track

stars so cold, wonderful, Bud Light bright
the complete devotion to the tears and the play

of furious cliché blocked, propped,
and costumed in real time across a script

a century or so old in the woods
behind the football field, in the cement

factory, by the train dodge train
tracks doing push ups for the cops lining us up

for the wagon and phone calls home
for which we will now wait up all night one

blue October after our electric
archetype has long slipped behind an iris wipe .

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Copyright © 2018 Matt W. Miller All rights reserved
from The Wounded for the Water
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission