Poetry: Selections from David Estringel

Cruel Summer

Silly white chickens

strut across the green grass,

pecking at black beetles

(clickity clack, clickity clack)

‘round a freshly dug fox hole.

I yell at them

from the back porch,

but they don’t listen.

Never do.

So, I sit back—

sun on my face—

bringing a cold glass

of summer to my lips

and wait

for the fall of

a hard snow.

Days of Red and Gold

Sittin’ at the kitchen table—cup of black coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other—I look past catches of blue paint and the remains of flies on screen door mesh, toward the sorghum field just beyond the ranch gate. Death’s stillness—a gravity all its own—has seeped into every corner, permeated the grout of tiled countertops and spaces in between fruit magnates on the old, white Frigidaire like the smell of rabbit in the oven or hints of storm riding out on the breeze. Life’s left the room—no pulse under these linoleum tiles, it seems—leaving it darker, a bit colder, despite morning’s come to call through the window above the sink. I take another sip—bitter on the tongue—then a drag (or two), finding myself—absent-minded—fingering the contents of a chipped, pink and white bowl of green stamp china (of which she was so proud).

Four pennies, two dimes, and a nickel. Two rusty paper clips, A half-used packet of B&C headache powder. A dead fly.

I remember eating from it—sweetened raspberries, red and golden, from bushes in the garden—when I was small. How my sister and I would toss them back in grubby fistfuls, between chokes on the juice, as honied explosions—sour and sweet—took us to Heaven and back then ‘round, again, while mom would look out the screen door, tossing hair from her eyes—cup of black coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other—staring at my father working in the field, beyond. Never with a smile on her slowly hardening face.

Missing her, I think how lovely it was when all you needed to tackle the day was a belly full of hunger and a spoonful of sugar (or two).

the things that linger

 

half-eaten orange rinds

                                     on the kitchen table

air bubbles

                    under striped shelf paper

The Cranberries

                            on repeat in the CD player

posies and lavender

                                  pressed in books on the shelves

the smell of whispers

                                    at night

the wonder

                    of little things  

the dent

               of my ring finger

Absence

 

 

                                   

Everything you touched

David Estringel is a Xicanx writer/poet with works published in literary publications, such as The Opiate, Azahares, Cephalorpress, Lahar, Poetry Ni, DREICH, Rigorous, Somos En Escrito, Hispanecdotes, Ethel, The Milk House, Beir Bua Journal, and The Blue Nib. His first collection of poetry and short fiction Indelible Fingerprints was published in April 2019, followed by three poetry chapbooks, Punctures (2019), PeripherieS (2020), and Eating Pears on the Rooftop (coming 2022). His new book of micro poetry little punctures, a collaboration with UK illustrator, Luca Bowles, will be released in 2022.