Gravitas

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Dad, I’ve lost my skip.
Yesterday along a lake I never asked the name of
I lowered my shoulder like you taught, caught the flat rock
in my index finger sling and then zing. Plop.
I hate to get Acme with the onomatopoeia,
but things are weighing on me more these days,
mostly gravity. There are random fluctuations
in my planet’s rotation and time, time
you just can’t count on like you used to.
I remembered yesterday
until I forgot the phonetics. Now,
it could’ve been any day.
Someone’s rearranged the croquet wickets
and the line of ducklings is lost.
But then again, every poet’s lawn
is a metaphor for mortality, isn’t it?
Some days gravity presses
like a thumb stump. The door won’t open.
The outside so very outside and dense.
I’d feel less wile e. if I hadn’t just returned to the desert.
Cue tumbleweed. Cue voice over.
Someone talk to me, please.

 

 

Zebulon Huset is a writer and photographer living in San Diego. His writing has recently appeared in The Southern Review, Louisville Review, Meridian, Fence, Rosebud, Fjords Magazine, Portland Review, Texas Review and Roanoke Review among others. He publishes a writing prompt blog (Notebooking Daily) and is the editor of the fledgling journal Coastal Shelf.

 

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