By David Stallings © 2008
We haven’t seen each other for years.
At tonight’s gathering, it’s take-out
lasagna and tired salad.
My step-nephew chats
amiably, sunglasses atop
his constant baseball cap. His mother
says Steve’s been traveling—
launching nephew into storied visits
to the Vegas adult entertainment expo.
He fetches photos to illustrate reported
marvels—pendulous latex breasts,
perfect be-thonged bottoms,
astonishingly realistic
woman dolls.
Pictures pass over cheesecake
and decaf in murmured appreciation.
When they […]
By David Stallings © 2006
Seward, Alaska, 1954
Holding a .410/.22
over-and-under shotgun
across her knee,
my mother scans the peaks
above Resurrection River.
Her husband’s low camera
catches her right foot braced
on a snow bank. She wears
a blue kerchief, red and black
buffalo check jacket—a displaced
Tennessee girl, now forty,
with eleven year old son,
two years into a failing
marriage.
Here, she is
still
trying.
By David Stallings © 2004
I made my worst mistakes
because I was so afraid
of being alone.
It was unusual for my mother,
then in her 80s, to name a personal
demon.
She sat to my left on the couch,
my grown daughter to the right.
Certain as a strand of DNA,
the named fear snaked through
us. It left the same steely flavor
in our bellies,
and we each […]
By David Stallings © 2004
Nashville, 1948
My skinny schoolmate, Judy Kay,
lived across the street, daughter
of a Southern Baptist minister.
Safe in the play boat we’d built
in her back yard, I suggested,
Let’s show each other.
Near the fo’c’sle, I pulled down
my jeans, stretched the top
of my white underwear briefs.
Her neck craned with interest.
In turn I hungrily looked
down her belly and saw
nothing. Where […]
By David Stallings © 2004
Thirteen outlaws swung
in the breeze by movie’s end.
At age five, I preferred the hero’s
role, sporting a pair of six-shooters
and Captain Marvel’s cape.
But now death’s mystery
corralled me.
Did they really die? I asked my mother.
Oh, no, the actors don’t die.
It was possible to hang, die,
and still eat dinner.
I found a clothesline rope, fashioned
a noose, climbed an […]
