Three Poems
by Craig Kirchner
Passed
We rushed up from Jacksonville.
A local trooper in Emporia said 95
was not the speed limit,
said I was a threat on the road,
after he had driven across the median
with a spotlight in my eyes.
My Dad had gotten a ticket in Emporia.
4 AM, we got there
he was on a morphine drip.
Mom let me spend some time alone,
I don’t know if he could hear me,
but I told him the story about the ticket,
I thought he smiled,
and then he was gone.
Hurricane Floyd made the funeral
a challenge, carrying the coffin
in horizontal wind and rain.
They offered to postpone, Roafie said no.
I threw my suit away when it was over,
my thought was he wouldn’t
have had it any other way.
Remembering him years later,
is like wandering empty, endless doors
of no hellos, good-byes.
The holidays seem haunted with hurricane
savagery, reminiscent of his sense of humor.
The doorbell rings, no one’s there,
ever since Dad died.
*Originally published in Gas Blog (December ‘24)
Night Prowler
New Years, feast of a crowd,
and that next new concept,
the one you’ve never known,
or to recapture forgotten vintage,
that next unique high,
the one you’ve never known,
or to be more precise
the you you’ve never tried.
Then through the clamor
of the Times Square crowd
of which you feel centuries apart,
a glimpse of some delicious past.
Emerald green hem in the snow,
a refracted shot of light from the
antique gem hanging erotically,
enticingly at her throat.
A face to covet unlike the many,
an entity that stirs the lust
of ancient and albinoed soul,
the adrenaline of the Infidel.
Elegy Eve
Torment doesn’t wait for tomorrow,
he shows up tonight on Rofie’s porch,
looking like Stevie Becker,
wearing Robert’s overcoat
and smelling like Jim Beam and Old Spice,
demanding something other than lunchmeat
for the wake
and reminding me of Phillip Krause
and Kenyon Avenue.
He brushes past my elbow,
and invites himself in.
The wind that follows him blows
my scribble to the floor
and my now withered arm
he belittles as skinny and weak,
asks me how it feels.
Stevie Becker was bow-legged,
they said it was rickets,
and he wore knee braces.
It didn’t seem a big deal being short,
until they operated, broke, reset,
months of therapy, we were twelve.
It was a big deal, he wanted to be taller.
Philip Krause was quiet, fat,
obnoxious, had terrible breath.
I hit him behind the left ear with a toy hammer.
His head was bleeding.
I knew my life could never be the same,
so, I hid in the airy ways
between the row-houses on Kenyon Avenue.
Rofie, Robert and his parents,
they find me like Frankenstein.
He had to have stitches.
I get a beating with a horse whip,
and get grounded.
I never saw him after that in the alley,
anywhere.
Torment pours a drink,
offers me the bottle,
explaining I should sharpen my pencil,
come off the wagon,
he’s found the whip,
so cleverly hidden all these years,
it’s a long cold night,
and we’re just getting started with Robert.
*Originally published in Last Stanza (July ‘23)
BIO: Craig Kirchner is retired and living in Jacksonville. He loves the aesthetics of writing, has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart. Craig's writing has been published in Chiron Review, Main Street Rag and dozens of others. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems on a laptop; these words help keep him straight. Craig can be found on Bluesky.