Anthony Frame
Jets fly overhead and I think of explosions
and the Berlin Wall falling. I was eight years old
watching a gray man screaming like a bottle rocket
on top of the painted wall. Since the towers fell,
my six year old cousin recites God Bless America.
She loves baseball and has forgotten the image
of Americans losing their wings. I understand
her suppression. I can’t remember when Challenger
fractured into clouds but I know my mother’s fingernails,
painted sky blue, as she twisted the volume knob
on the black and white kitchen TV and whistled
Build Me Up, Buttercup. Yes, I see you, mother,
your hair still long and curly like an eighteen year old’s,
and your lips mocking dad’s Art Garfunkel fro. I see
how you smiled though Kennedy and King were shot down
like clay pigeons. With your false fingernails and blood red lips,
watching a nine inch Sony TV after I got home
from kindergarten. Eventually, you dropped me
in front of a cartoon as you walked upstairs,
past the black and white portraits of your youth.
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Anthony Frame is an exterminator who lives in Toledo, OH with his wife and their spoiled cat. His poems have been published in or are forthcoming from La Fovea, The Ambassador Project, Versal, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Connecticut River Review, and New Plains Review, among others. He is also co-editor of the online journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry. He likes bad TV and even worse music. You can Google him, but god only knows what you’ll find.
(Update February 22, 2010): Anthony’s first chapbook, Paper Guillotines, is tentatively scheduled for release in March or April of 2010 from Imaginary Friend Press.
