Three Pieces
Parker Tettleton
Don’t Do Gymnastics In The House
We’re touching our hair privately—no, that’s we’re going to land where we’re going to be happy if we can swallow another stand. I do not understand the way I do laundry or mind the way you call your parents. I behave like bees behaving like me before a sunset before you begin: morning is used to being outside of itself. Morning is a way back to the gym. The way we love each other is a light with a hair flip inside. It’s a light for those who dare themselves again.
Pyramid
Memphis is an hour & a half away from wherever we are now. We’re more than ten minutes late to an appointment with this bullshit government. You’re singing words I can’t make out from the back seat—I’m singing ones in my best baritone from the front. The traffic never changes looking at the traffic. We get where we need to be silent for a few minutes with the without a little softer. Let’s be quiet while we’re somewhere else—that’s a little more inside of us but the rest is inside of itself.
Our Fathers Are Dead Again
We haven’t spoken since I woke to find you not to my left—but on the sofa, blanket covering blanket with no room for anyone else. Coming home, you’re not there, eight hours later, on the sofa, now—you’re just not. I take a shower in the second bathroom—mine. You’re in the bedroom—ours. I listen for anything—I listen to say something about our fathers. You come out eventually—again, ready for fathers. I’m still—I’m just like they are right—where they are & we’re here, we’re very, very, here.
Parker Tettleton is a vegan Leo living in Oxford, Mississippi. He is the author of Please Quiet (Ravenna Press, 2018), Ours Mine Yours (Pitymilk Press, 2014), Greens (Thunderclap Press, 2012) and Same Opposite (Thunderclap Press, 2010). More work & information is here: http://parker-augustlight.blogspot.com.
