Thirteen

from Miracle Strip by Matt Layne

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about

Music:
Ned Mudd
Code
from the album Time Travel for Dummies

lyrics

Thirteen

The day before we first met at Water World in Dothan,
I leapt a sunning shine of coils that rattled
as I ran down a rock-broken hill.
You and I threw rocks at hornets' nests
and fled their furious stings.
We crawled, hands and knees, through storm drains
with nothing but a dying flashlight and a BB gun.
At a 4-way stop sign, we hurled profanities at cars.
If they gave chase, we hid in the woods.
We crossed the alligator-infested swamp on fallen trees
and swung out over the fetid waters on kudzu vines.
Your father once chased me
when I knocked on your window at 2 am.

When I slept over, we rolled your grandpa’s El Camino
down his driveway to cruise Dothan after midnight.
We waged bottlerocket and Roman candle wars.
I stole my father’s .22 to shoot our old GI Joe dolls.
I drank Jack and Coke and spat tobacco.
You abstained.
I flung myself from my rooftop for the whoop
and thump of landing on earth while you waited,
grinning on the grass. When I tried to Evel Knievel
a storm-cut channel dividing Deer Path, but fell short,
you pulled me and my broken bicycle out.
My bonfire appetites nearly burnt us both alive,
so how am I here now at 52 while you never saw fourteen?

credits

from Miracle Strip, released August 31, 2022
Music:
Ned Mudd
Code
from the album Time Travel for Dummies

license

about

Matt Layne Birmingham, Alabama

Poet, librarian, raconteur; Matt Layne has been poking hornet's nests and looking under rocks since he was knee-high to a peanut peg.
I reckon you oughta check him out.