2.23.22 “retention.”

 What does that have to do with anything?

What is “Anything?”

Hardy Stewart Oct 1 2021 | Revised version of an old poem..... Palmetto days:

"Boy scouts in hi-vis visors were selling 

wristbands, as DayGlo darkened on the lawns. 

Hi-beams caught their glittered lip gloss gelling 

in the coldness by treeline Portajohns,” 

he said, cutting across the boulevards, 

and parking on Palmetto, talked then of 

these moments that recall such auburn yards.”

Hayrides-

Hardy Stewart Oct 2 2021 | I’m coming to find you. We have unfinished art to share with the world. 

Why do you say that?

do you remember what your voice was?

The last time was

when we spoke,

your       mother’s      hand     guided    me   up  the stairs.

And you, I trust, watched me leave, through    the walls, the trees,

even the curvature    of the earth

did not keep    your eyes

from following.

Just long enough, my name hid in her memory,

while masks from my shirt-pocket handed themselves to her.

Then, at the landing,

with your mother’s voice in my hair,

a basement sigh grew heavy and still in my arms.

Once before, you’d cut yourself open

to entice me.  Inside you smelled like dust

and silverfish,

the carpets of gutted schoolhouses.

I still feel her vise on my spine,

too full already with your lungs to close on me.

I have never been able to cry foul,

not even to whisper it in my sleep.