House of Heart by Holly Rene Hunter (readnow TXT) 📖

rocked him gently and told him it wasn’t bad but even his hair smelled of smoke and I knew I was talking to myself and a dead boy.

Later that day they asked me to go with the Super and a chaplain to his home to tell his mother what had happened. Reluctantly, I agreed and we drove to an old farmhouse sitting on top of a small hill. They told the poor woman about her boy and she fell upon me with such force my knees buckled. The chaplain gave her an injection of consolation and laid her on the sofa.

I walked out the screen door and waited by the car. An old yellow dog lopped up and I petted him, knowing it was Katy , the Lab CP spoke of with such tenderness. My eyes felt like dust that might blow away in the mild summer breeze. Tears begin to well in the corners and spread out, misting the parched orbs and running down my cheeks. I sobbed until no moisture was left.  Until now, I never spoke of CP again.

 

in memory of Carswell Pinketon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Migrant 

Moving from place to place, hoping for a day’s wages we traveled by train from the north to west Texas to escape the cold. Maria gave birth to our boy on the cold floor of the box car. We are not Hoboes, we never seem to be homeward bound.

We share shacks alongside orange fields in the west. The smell of citrus wafts the air from rotting soil where the over- ripe fruit falls. So quiet at times in the fields, the only sound is the thud of putrid fruit falling to the ground.

Sharing one room, the children’s pallet behind curtained corners, they listen to the sound of copulation. Life goes on. Perhaps someday they will have a door to close.

Waking before dawn, the men and abled bodied women wait in the chilly air for the grove owner to collect us. Today I brought my gloves, I felt I would be chosen. Yesterday I went home empty handed. It frightened me to see her, skin so thin it barely covered her brittle bones. Trying hard to nurse the hungry baby, her milk drying up with the rest of her. Should she die , I worry for myself. Stuck with the child, well, I know I can’t do it.

This morning her desperate eyes stare into mine. I look away from the hunger and fear. She knows if she dies I will  leave the child behind. I slip my stolen blade into my boot. The cold steel imprinting my ankle. I take the knife with me today. Today I must do something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Samaritan

 

(scary fare)

It’s lonely along the highway. I’m alone and afraid, my car abandon down the road a ways.
My eyes burn from the sun and wind-swept sand. My feet are raw with blisters, my shoes are in my hands.
My white skirt is dirty from clouds of dust blowing, dirt whipping at my legs from the embankment.
I pull up my hem, tuck it into my waist band, easier to get where I am going.
I am desperate for help but I fear that someone will come along. The world is hard to trust but he pulls over and I rush to his door.

My fear is palpable as he stares me up and down. I search his eyes for motive. He will gladly give me a ride, I need just get inside. Already at his door handle, I pull back my hand and lie, “ I have phoned a friend who is coming for me”. I hold my phone out, battery dead, but he doesn’t know that. He leaves, and I hang back in misery until I spot a small store ahead of me.


The following morning, trouble forgotten, browsing the news over tea, my heart pounds and It’s hard to breathe.
Her body was found beneath some trees, near a barren road rarely used. Her life taken brutally,
a dead cell phone lying nearby and in her hands, her shoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sweetness of Dark

On this dock, streams of
sweat slide down my neck,
between my breasts, a rivulet.

A taste of salt when my
tongue flicks my lips.
The slap of sea on stone walls,
mist my eyes, washing
colours down my face.

Figments scurry into caves of
memory like escaping hermit crabs.
Sea horses trapped in murky
kelp cry for help, choking bubbles
of last breaths.

This creaking dock, freedom floating off
beneath that milky moon into the sweetness of dark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eyes of Marble Angels

Press your pen against your temple.
Poised above the pages,
hang your heart out with the Gods,
meadow larks, mountains, and seas.
Give birth to ruins existing inside
where the deepest and darkest hide.

Let the falls flood your fears and foam the
roman fountains into eyes of marble angels.
Across the turquoise ocean beneath your golden palm.
Wipe grains of sand from your vinho verde eyes.
Place your pen into the indigo and rest

.

 

 

 

 

The Deep Well

 

a short tale

 

 

Pale with emerald eyes, hair the color of rusty nails, Norma was a beautiful girl. Her father, Tom, a farmer with six kids escaped the orphanage at age twelve by swimming a moat on a winter's night with his baby brother hanging from his shoulders like a sack of stones. Her mother, Ada, traditional and resolute, would not abandon her Scottish Gaelic.

Tom's father succumbed to a massive brain hemorrhage inflicted in a barroom brawl over a woman. He lingered for three days but lost the fight. The womanizer left Tom's mother with five children and no resources and she was forced to take her life by embracing a fiery pot belly stove, the only heat she and the poor little ones had in that dead of winter. She held on till she could no longer feel the sear and her desiccated soul passed over. With no one to care for the little ones there was no choice but to place them in the County's Orphanage where Tom soon swam off with his little brother in the dead of night.

Tom and Ada met when he was barely nineteen and trying hard to make his way. A thief stole the pigs he had purchased with money scraped up and sold them to Ada's father. Upon learning the pigs rightfully belonged to the young man, being a Christian, he turned the pigs directly over to their rightful owner. Tom was a fine looking boy. Ada was tall and some would say plain. She alone helped the young man round up his pigs and in the process fell in love with the handsome lad. They married and built a home with their own hands in the middle of three hundred acres bestowed on them by Ada's father.

Norma was the second of their children. She was stunning but fragile. Too delicate to work in the fields, but all the siblings worked, right alongside the field hands, tobacco and cotton their life blood.

Ada spent many nights worrying over the girl, melancholia they called it. Norma could have her pick of young men from the countryside but laid eyes on the beautiful welsh fellow and went straight up to him and told him she wanted him for her boyfriend, "Dw i'n dy garu di", the only welsh she knew. Straightforward her manner and he was hers for the taking.

I would love to go forward and say they lived a happy life but they did not. They settled the old Whitfield place, a farmhouse that the young Welshman acquired rent-free in exchange for working the small farm. Mr. Whitfield killed himself by jumping into the deep well dug in the middle of the dirt yard, covered now by boards as though it no longer existed. Norma begged to leave the place but the young provider's plan was to save and deliver them all from this hard life. Their youth and passion could not shield them from the adversity of the great depression.

So upset the girl became that Ada once slapped her face and told her she would be committed to some dreadful institution if she did not straighten up. She sat on the porch rocking her baby, that was when she saw him...God, coming down from the heavens. The clouds opened up and he rode on horseback, thundering out of the sky towards them. She grabbed her baby up and fled inside, falling onto the old bed, the little one beneath her.

She was not good after that and would witness unimaginable sights. The Welshman was afraid to leave her and many times, even during the most formidable weather, bundled her and the child and delivered them to Ada who could sometimes calm her. They would whisper when she slept, "she will get better".

It was the worst feeling you could imagine, seeing those rotten boards strewn out on the ground. He prayed it wasn't so... That something else could be. He threw his satchel down and ran there but his legs would not hold him and he fell to his knees. He cried out to them but no sound came, not a chirping bird, a rustling leaf, nor even a whisper of a breeze. The man's wails echoed about the yard, through the empty house and out into the farmland. The only sound finally heard was the whooshing of a frightened flock of geese.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sacrifices

The flagstaff is no longer
visible from my door.
I have left my cul-de-sac
and the high flying banner
of black and gold that hangs
in remembrance of the missing.

I only imagine the
The sorrow of those
who will not lay eyes
on their young soldier,
wasted in futile wars of old men.

In compensation
A small flag lies at the feet
of the fallen.

"We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arlington

 

 

As far as the eye can see,

dotted with cracked teeth that jut through the verdure

adorning the slopes that vanish over the horizon.

Twigs caught in twine of wrought iron arms rustle in the forlorn zephyr,

trapping leaves on bronze plate that designate where valor lies.

Worn flags, stiff with age, quiver like hearts of caged doves.

 

Red poppies in the common droop, overcome by the scent of copper

that fills the air over fields  of treasure that flourish forever,   far as the eye and beyond.

 

 

ragazzi – in memory of my father-in-law Posted on July 9, 2015 by Heartafire

The small boy clings

to his father’s hand

who searches for

someone who speaks

his native tongue.

In school they call him

ragazzi Nazi,

he does not look up

but inside he hurts. 

Once he wore Lederhosen to school,

later he asked his Dad to burn them.

He misses his grandmother and

the scent of ginger and baked apples.

He is smart  and learns the way early.

Work hard and do not complain.

He  raises his children to be

proud and strong but tonight

they are tired standing vigil.

The sterile room is filled with

the sound of labored breathing

until silence replaces laughter,

wisdom,  and a loving heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have I Missed My Stop?


At times I feel I have boarded the wrong train,
familiar scenes scream past