Pam Crow

Military Cemetery

I found you here, Father, a decade after you died.
Your tombstone is identical to hundreds growing

like bleached teeth from the buzz-cut grass.
Maintain a respectful attitude and volume.

Did they play taps for you? No sitting on headstones
or on top of graves. Did you get a 21-gun salute?

I lost you, I let you become lost, you left. Paranoia
invaded your body like incurable cancer.

I heard you nailed plywood over your windows.
At 16 you taught me how to drive.

“Listen,” you said, “for when the engine begins
to sound unhappy.” O chainsaw father,

unhappy engine, you loved that spot near
railroad tracks, next to the water’s edge.

It is a park now, with manicured gardens.
I went down there today. You wouldn’t like it.

I searched for a rock, and the first one
was a broken thunder egg. I found the other half

nearby. If I believed in signs, there you were.
O chain smoker, chain link fence father.

Stones found at graveside will be left alone.

Back to Issue XIV…

Lynne Ellis writes in pen. Their words appear in Poetry Northwest, The Seventh Wave, the North American Review, the Missouri Review, Bracken, and many other beloved journals and anthologies. Winner of the Washburn Prize, the Perkoff Prize, and the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, she believes every poem is a collaboration. Read their digital chapbook, "Future Sketchbook," online at Harbor Review. Ellis holds a Certificate in Editing from the University of Washington, serves as a poetry reader at Crab Creek Review, and is Publishing Editor of Tulipwood Books, a developmental-editing press. She wants to work with you.