The Myth of Screaming
They say my father
could have gone pro,
or played college ball,
maybe Lasalle, West Chester,
and that he would never miss
as he swooped into the lane,
the Apollo of the family,
his jet black anemone
arm hair waving
in the summer pick-up games,
at the courts chipped
and broken next to the apartments,
his voice a grunting echo,
hands palm the ball
over the horizon of the swings,
jungle gym, sandbox
where once the black kid dove
headfirst, face covered in
hornet stings and panic, then
an ambulance blanket.
He came out of the same woods
where one night a truck
filled with hollering men
and rifles shot the trees
up for a mythical deer or spirit bear.
Each time my father
dribbles the ball between
legs, through mountains of bodies,
the story then peaks
with my mother’s voice,
more of her teeth, incisor gates
shut, portcullis trap,
oil pouring through the gaps,
my sister in tow,
short-haired, blonde,
pixie-Ariel, riding the fear,
a vulture gliding on the updraft,
watching as the volcano
splits the concrete of the court,
chip of gray blacktop pours
into a red crevice, Brucie
and Bryan’s dad Wally tumbles
first, Rory’s dad next, beer bottles
in long rows, soldiers holding
the innocent by-standers at bay,
as they fall, each one pushing
the other down in, the tinkle
of glass becomes a tiny scream,
as anger burns the myth
into the air, as my father
shoots his last shot, his body
in flight, arms aloft, rolled out
as the wing bones extended
into his aim. The ball, a sun
trying to set one last time.
C.L. Liedekev is a writer/propagandist who lives in Conshohocken, PA with his real name, wife,
and children. He attended most of his life in the Southern part of New Jersey. His work has been
published in such places as Humana Obscura, Red Fez, Open Skies Quarterly, River Heron
Review, and Vita Brevis. His real goal is to make the great Hoboken poet/exterminator Jack
Wiler proud. So far, so good.
Fixator Press 