Back at You by Fleta Vincent

“Stop hollering at me!”

his voice roars like thunder

from the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

“I’m not hollering at you,” I say

up from the valley below,

“I just want to know why

you waited until the last minute

to do your science project!”

He kicks the laundry basket

with all of his might on a way-back

Hank Aaron swing across the ugly

resignation of sinking burgundy carpet,

looking as if he wishes it had been

me making contact with the tip

of his shoe and deposited rage

screaming “You shut up!”

In a second, the casket I bury

deep when I die every day to parental

failure rises to the surface

to be hurled with reckless abandon

at his face I scream words unleashed

“You shut the fuck up!”

and the freedom of letting go

feel like wings unfurling ready

to fly away from this place

of moderating tone and inefficient

mediation of the family’s days

and nights controlled by this one

lost sheep I can’t make

come home.

His face mirrors stunned disbelief,

at the lack of habitual tenderness,

for the cursing words never hurled

in maternal prophecy over him

or his brothers’ lives.

Fury moves too fast to see the front

door open until sound slams my ears

and makes my eyes flinch to see

the fragility of shells cracking reminiscent

of toes tipping through the mines

of his father’s explosions and I want it out,

I want his father’s spirit out of my house.

Fleta Vincent’s work has been published in Nailed, Voice of Eve, Bloodletter’s, and Miller’s Pond.  Her work has also appeared in The Raven’s Perch, Chantwood, Cottonwood, and The Voices Project.  Writing poetry gives her strength, connects her to the Divine, and brings her immense joy.  She is a native of Georgia and is currently working on her first book of poetry.