It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
running up, down
remembering, forgetting my
phone, a sweater in case when
already two minutes late I
pause with one foot
over the threshold
glance at the back door still
open and take in
through the shut, left-side
blinds, something white,
waist-high amid the ducks chipmunks
squirrels stuffing in
the patio’s thrown, bird food—
child in white shirt
bent over, feeding critters too?
I dash and peer
and the morning
stills: A tremendous
white-as-unfolded-paper
rooster is eating sunflower
seeds on my back porch
with his florid wattle and comb
bulging almost indecently
full. At his feet, a rabbit
keeps munching, but he
spots me staring
and stands up, two-and-a half-feet tall,
his head going back
and forth (like someone
told him it should),
as his yellow pencil legs
and six hotdog toes staccato
up and down
next to our grill
where we cooked
his many, packaged wives
before he turns and
takes off in fearless
strides around the hedge
with his tail feathers,
too fluffy for such
a ravishing male, twitching
back. How can I not,
even in heels, open the back door
further,
scatter the fur there to follow? He
glances back, struts
past the neighbor’s purple flowers
and I think, Roosters
don’t fly, remember my phone
in my hand while he watches
and must understand
because he really
runs now, reaching
with those crazed legs
that are too cartoon
to support such white weight,
let him soar between bounds,
or arc around the last rowhouse and
out of the shade
—all lit
engorged red, lifted white
and skinny bursting yellow—
with such grace
I feel we should
watch roosters race
instead of horses—
as he leaps to the left
out of sight.
He was never afraid. His running was
more like showing off or
like he was leading me
into the sun
and to his last place
in the wide, hot grass
to stand, pondering his point
while insisting
and giggling on the phone
that there was a huge, white, gorgeous
rooster
just jogging
behind our houses.
I knew then he was laughing
back, but remembered that
to appear
as a white animal
to only one woman
is something
gods used to do—
that thank god his visit
did not leave me
knocked out and
up as such visits
tend to, but still it struck me
as an impossible wink, meant
just for me, something I had
to run after, to see,
before I was so late for this lunch
with my sisters, the one where I whisper
I am getting married tomorrow.Hilary Varner (she/her) received her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared in The Collagist, The Cortland Review, Juked, SWWIM Every Day, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Plainfield, IL, with her husband, three kids, and two cats, and can be reached at hilaryvarner@gmail.com, facebook.com/hilary.varner.9, and on Instagram @pisceanfaerie.
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I love every single centimeter of this poem, but especially this:
"that thank god his visit
did not leave me
knocked out and
up as such visits
tend to..."