I Walk Along
To get to Benito Juarez Elementary, I walked over
South Hill, often with Jason and Eric and Tracy and Lauren
and once Jennifer who tattled on me for hitching a ride
On my sister’s banana-seater. Drivers must have
Seen my sister struggling up the hill with my added weight,
And how the kids cheered us as we roared down to the light
On Sunkist, and all those adults let us go. In class
We had been learning bicycle safety so that one day
I could ride my silver Roddy—upon which I’d dashed
The river, leapt the dust trails, skidded up and down Virginia
Avenue—but Jennifer and Mrs. Ruble were not impressed,
And two hundred fifty times I had to write, I will not ride
On the back of my sister’s bicycle, the pencil slower to push
Than uphill pedals, the limp of my cursive taking its dull toll.
Golden Poppies
The nova in your middle holds your flares
Stark against the deadest Iowan greens.
As a child I feared imprisonment for
Plucking you, one more star in Hollywood
Beyond my boyish grasp.
And now you’re here,
Ascending in the new place I call home,
Rooting my spinning galaxy in used
Ruts, the very lanes my dreams would orbit
And unfurl, shining through the dark matter
Of wishing, of wasting, of failing those
California Summers and Wisconsin
Winters, of losing my way as I lost
The scent of oranges, the ocean’s rush,
And how I had been divinely ignored.
Golden Poppies (4)
In this summer’s drench
you were lost:
the dawn of your brain
never outreaching the water-grass
Horizon, and there are no stars,
then, to trace
back to California,
the constellation of my memory
Unfurling a golden age
blazing as the stroke
of your hot petals,
a golden hole burnt
In Iowa’s green sea, calmly
folding me in its constant wave.
Curiosity Kitten
Lauren and Spring
were the queens we’d show
off for on our bikes;
the season for guessing
Women was ripe. Jason
kissed Tracy before
the whole class,
and Bart groped Kathy
In the back, and Eric sniggered
over a poem where the speaker
put his wintered hand
on a comforting pussy—
We were at love’s mouse-hole,
hoping for that mystery
to peek its nose
so we could claw
It and make it a feast:
we couldn’t name
what made Misty’s body
or Jeanie’s smile so
Delicious, but if we stilled
that ball of string,
it might be mastered,
like a sparrow spiked—
That flying thing,
what’s it like to peal those feathers,
to touch those scaled feet,
to taste that weird beak?
Walking up a Hill
Jason, Tracy, Lauren, and I gathered pebbles
From the steep side to toss over the wire mesh
Atop South Hill and onto the north-bound Five
Traffic. We didn’t know a penny-weight could,
Like love, smash a shield, or a pea-sized stone
Wreck a life, like a lack of understanding.
We wanted some sound, some gravity.
We must have looked like we were celebrating
As we lunged at the sky to lob our stones over the grill,
Until a driver came around, cracked his window,
Get home, before I call the cops, and
Jason and Lauren took off like shots,
While Tracy and I walked, wondering
How long we’d be in prison.
Some of Jared Pearce’s poems have recently been or will soon be shared in Nixes Mate, DIAGRAM, Infinity Ink, Otoliths, MUSE, and J Journal. He grew up in Anaheim, California, now lives in Iowa, and misses the ocean and the mountains.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 