By: Isaac George Lauritsen

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Blisters

Then robed and donning Birkenstocks

     the Word lets from its beard

directives of fish infused stew  

     to river-teal the tale of parishioners.

Our parents – steeple-tall, ripped on folgers –

     lutheran cha-cha, spread sunshine

on our rye bread to divinate the ice cream.

     We depart as scarves, parkas

          stuffed with styrofoams of casserole

into the lampposted night. There, the siblings

    toss sleet. Their love a thrashing wren.

Soon as we get cozy as a minivan,

     potholes lunch on snow

so Mom sings our cartoons to blip.

     We shenanigan, revolt with teeth

           and think us our ancestral cats.

We scope out plastic shaping eggs the rabbit laid.

     We fry the bees we battle

          with tennis tools and rack.

Spring the berry of our breeze-joy

     sprung up in afternoon

          by sandies crumbed at corner lip.

Oh sugar, your loll. We deep-nap

    on dogged recliners, wake up older

          as if time’s the fiction of a book.

Our throats pound cans. We beer-hue.

     We whiskey ‘neath the yard-magnolia.

We gig grocery bagging, pinch pennies

     so as to later funny-green our brains.

We leery hear fate’s stony speech:

come gather, ye steam warped baseball gloves.

     All ye who lawn your dreams —

          the mowers won’t till dawn mow.

---

porch watch

      midbite

          into a peach

   my brain

            bends

to taste a strike

  of lightening

        in the distance

          my eyes and tongue

are not gigantic

       my teeth don’t

  pinch a cloud

  to drip a shock

  to ground

       the world is

       only normal

       and fantastic

  it keeps in it

all that has passed

                        in it

       winter
         now a green

       horses
          now a sleeping
                line of cars

               once the bush
                  now the mug
                from parting sight
      from the bush

  birds turn into
  the sky’s loud gray

               I arrive
                  this pit
               to teeth

               then go inside
        my normal house
where it has never rained.

---

Isaac George Lauritsen is a poet and illustrator. His work can be found, or is forthcoming,  in Bennington Review, Full Stop, Hobart Pulp, Jabberwock Review, Lost Pilots Lit, mutiny! magazine, Muzzle Magazine, The Shore, Soundings East, Tilted House Review, TIMBER, Your Impossible Voice, on a broadside from Octopus Books, and elsewhere. He served as Associate Poetry Editor for Bayou Magazine. He writes copy for money. He lives in New Orleans.