Colloquial
by Bill Outlaw

We were
      those children,
those odd ones who
melted wax to lengthen
a candle, stole aftershave
to run lamps mashed
from aluminum-anything
to lengthen
      the light.
      To escape
the hallway's slats
and inked angles,
dissected by the doorway
where he snored it off.

Days found us
      sleep-eyed,
wobbling along on legs
and five-fingered watermelons
down toward the creek,
the frayed rope flapping
over an oasis of Coors cans.
Fred says "it's from some
nigger that killed hisself
in the 50's-my old man
has the clipping folded
up in the end of his
yearbook; he said Irene

McKennah
      had him
under the bleachers
at Homecoming, so her
parents sent her packed
to Cleveland ." The bravest
of us, perhaps, the fiercest,
with coal eyes tied
to switchblade faces,
always
      refusing
to blink-
swung out over air
      on that thread
      till gravity
      twists back into
      wrenching water.

Falling. I think of Irene
      under thirty years
of Jim and pancakes,
scraped clean of makeup
just out the shower;
she's staring up as my body
splashes the mirrors,
scraping wet skin off with a faded dishtowel-
frowning her mouth as I cleave
beneath the current
      where her life churned
      and the other left. 

Currently a participant in a program at New College dubbed Baachanalian Humanism (British & American Literature), Bill Outlaw's prose has yet to catch up with his verse, despite prolonged threats with a rusty crowbar.