Kevin McLellan
Please Establish A View
Hours after bowing from too much
heft the tulip snapped
at the stem. Laid up on the couch
I half watch TV until
a limping deer’s downed by some
wolves at a watering hole.
A throat-breaking silence follows.
I struggle to stand,
totter to the kitchen and notice
the sparkly get well cards
from some dear friends. But I
want my dad to call.
He’s called twice in my life, when
his mother passed
and when mine needed unexpected
surgery. I pour water.
The sound is a glass of orange tulips
I drink.
Kevin McLellan is the author of Tributary (Barrow Street), the chapbooks Round Trip (Seven Kitchens) and Shoes on a wire (Split Oak, forthcoming), and the book arts project [box] (Small Po[r[tions, forthcoming). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize, and his poems have appeared in many journals including: American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, Kenyon Review Online, Thrush Poetry Journal, West Branch, Western Humanities Review, Witness, and others. Kevin lives in Cambridge MA.
Return to September 2015 Edition
Hours after bowing from too much
heft the tulip snapped
at the stem. Laid up on the couch
I half watch TV until
a limping deer’s downed by some
wolves at a watering hole.
A throat-breaking silence follows.
I struggle to stand,
totter to the kitchen and notice
the sparkly get well cards
from some dear friends. But I
want my dad to call.
He’s called twice in my life, when
his mother passed
and when mine needed unexpected
surgery. I pour water.
The sound is a glass of orange tulips
I drink.
Kevin McLellan is the author of Tributary (Barrow Street), the chapbooks Round Trip (Seven Kitchens) and Shoes on a wire (Split Oak, forthcoming), and the book arts project [box] (Small Po[r[tions, forthcoming). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize, and his poems have appeared in many journals including: American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, Kenyon Review Online, Thrush Poetry Journal, West Branch, Western Humanities Review, Witness, and others. Kevin lives in Cambridge MA.
Return to September 2015 Edition