Calloused Hands

The first thing to purge is plot.
Poetry is not why you feel but how
you feel,
how mother wore a flower-print dress
and stood at the back screen door,
while you hammered pegs into plastic,
seated on the kitchen floor,
and didn't see what surely must have been
tears streaming,
and didn't hear what surely must have been
gasping sobs,
all you knew was the pounding, pounding,
the hammering, hammering,
trying to shatter
plastic pegs with the plastic hammer,
hard as his calloused hands.

W. Barrett Munn is a graduate of The Institute of Children’s Literature. His adult poetry has been published in New Verse News, Speckled Trout Review, Volney Road Review, Book of Matches, Copperfield Review Quarterly, and others are forthcoming.