Read More: A brief Q&A with Allen Weber
Vincent went off his meds to travel time
He’s returned to his room with some questions.
Are Dismal and Wonder Crayola colors?
He’s lost computer privileges, will I Google it for him?
In REM sleep, Vincent tripped
through a thin place between institutional presence
and rural Michigan, 1951, where
he found his not-yet mother,
a naked comma on a stained mattress.
He knew she was the willow girl
straddling a chestnut mare in the scallop-edged
black and white photos grownup-her kept
in a shoebox beneath her bed.
Vincent settled over her, a glimmer
in the blackness, wondering
how she wasn’t aware he was there–
there to protect her.
He felt her tense, heard her chirp
in response to creaking at the base of the stairs.
He scented a sour warmth—urine
pooling, then soaking into the ticking—
other-earthly perfume.
A shadow turned away,
retreating down the stairs.
So Vincent wants to know
was it his quantum presence
or her whispered woodnote
that admonished the trespasser?
And will the terror return
now that she’s alone again?
Also, after my shift, will I drive him to Krispy Kreme?
He has a coupon.
Mama told Vincent what the voice said
You’re worthless. At night
Vincent grows a monkey tail.
Grandpa insisted from his grave.
Come to me.
The boy. The boy.
Burn everything.
Daddy didn’t sign up for crazy.
He’d shacked up with a woman
who wasn’t. But she was
not as beautiful.
A quarter smile and half-closed eyes. Mama
stroked Vincent’s fur as he feigned
human sleep. She poured a glass of wine,
bathed, and lit a shoebox on the hearth.
First, edges of a picture—
her, propping one year-old Vincent
on the hood of a ’57 Chevy—
curled into flame.
From the calendar on the garage wall
a bare-breasted Miss July watched
Mama climb into the rafters.
The noose was practiced,
the rope, taut, an inch too long.
You never did think things through.
Mama’s toes reached, leaving
ruby stains on the concrete floor.
Vincent pressed his face into her
thighs—shaved smooth, smelling of lilac—
and lifted her until he couldn’t.
Vincent dreams he was a crow
Blame the hammer pulse of youth: sure he’d fly
Vincent plunged, limb to earth, a fallen wraith.
Dark resurrects the farmer’s fairest child.
She lifted Vincent into stubborn faith.
Caged then freed from fingers hard and tender,
he grips her burnished shoulder, starts to preen
her waving hair—black as mother feathers.
She warns, Your race are banished to the fields,
but relents with manna—suet and bone.
He’s but a fledgling damned with gratitude
for this would-be savior who’s saved no one.
She flings his sleeping body into blue,
Fly awake, my Vincent. Rejoin your kind.
My papa mustn’t guess. We’re out of time.
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Allen lives in Hampton, Virginia with his poet wife and two of their three sons. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies—including Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fourth River, Iris Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, Splash—Haunted Waters Press, Terrain, Unlikely Stories, and Up the Staircase Quarterly.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Allen Weber