Stepping off Mackville Bridge

 

 

Over the rail you can see the sweet spot,

that dark curl of current, eye-shaped and swirling

 

at the surface, staring back. It’s where the big rainbows

linger, a spot that’s hard to hit with a lure

 

from shore. To either side, moss velvets the rocks

in sunlight. To hit it, don’t jump, but step and let

 

that slight forward momentum sail you

into the pupil. Not enough and the cement

 

will catch your back. Too far and you’re in the toothy shallow.

No one ever wanted to die here. This was never a suicide leap, not

 

any kind of sure thing. It was the practice of trajectory, full and complete.

You knew from that one step whether you got it right

 

or not. The whole way down, you knew it was water

or it was rock.

 

The step was something we never did again;

it was nothing at all like living.

 

 

 

​

Elementary

 

 

We taught ourselves how to hit and how to take it,

how to steal machetes from the hardware store.

 

Weekends, we threw bottles at the janitor’s lame dog. We taught

ourselves how to smoke stolen grass on the church lawn while bats

 

flicked out from the cottonwoods.

Some of us knew we were insects

 

dumbed by the moon. Some of us wrapped

our hands tight around the teacher’s neck.

 

Our pants were greased and ripped by the shattered windows

of abandoned buildings.

 

We all knew how to bleed.

We set fires, spit on the flag-draped cross.

 

We learned to die every day,

hoping each time would be the last.

 

​