Four Poems: Dustin King
Seven seasons of the honeylocust in godwin cemetery The whole hill is iced over. I almost slip into a grave. One headstone reads Lemon. Another Crush. Lemon Crush. The Smiths. The Painters. The Thrashers with their own graveyard out towards Buchanon badly overgrown. The state insisted on last names and the tradesfolk’s descendants became my friends. Fincastle and her five steeples. 700 peoples. Methodist. Presbyterian. Southern Baptist. Episcopalian (That’s me!). Catholic. A sixth steeple on the east side of town only visible when the trees lose all their leaves: the African-American church. My mom told me my kindergarten teacher with her crimson lipstick sang something special in the choir. What if I wrote a line here like, the roots, the roots hold our bodies in place so we don’t reach for each other? Silly as a casket. Silly in our Sunday Best. Silly as the incinerator. My 11th grade biology teacher, lazy asshole that he was, said, toss me in a meadow. He was cremated. The moon in the center of a pink hole of clouds in the sky like a springtime meadow perfect as no tree may be. The honeylocusts like arthritic hands. Like all the cadavers’ final collected calcified exhale. During the Fincastle Festival some conscientious community member ratted me out for smoking Marlboros up here. I smoked a lot of pot here too. Snickered at the headstone that said Stoner. Had sex once but I can’t remember with whom. Attended Bible camp. Played hide and seek. Aimed