Subtext
In places you break
or pause—
dare I say
for truths? Children fall
out of grown-up
windows every day. Elders
try to hold onto scooting
in-the-sunbelt. I too must
accept these plots,
and all others, that escape
as stutters. A nursery rhyme
character told me
so, that the stone wall
is to blame. A mason said
being transparent
is soft. Embodied out,
I must be frank—the end
of me is the start
of you, the sun insists
on this gospel. Triangles
always challenge within’s
smallnesses, and meaning
must never be fully known,
moreover by you.
Bring in the guards!
Inman Square
This, the route I take to the library,
but today in cream-colored linens
which I infrequently wear) & a straw
hat that William Carlos or Tennessee
or C.K. might wear. I’m sitting
on the bench nearest the bus stop
that also has a bench. A bus opens
its doors to a hydrant & I think
about that young woman who got side-
swiped by a truck. See the ghost bike
over there? & the plastic flowers?
The boys of summer here are men—
wear tight tees & loose shorts
(underwearless?), likely college students
from elsewhere. It’s that time of year.
Several of them carry sealed cardboard
boxes containing box fans, likely
purchased from Inman Hardware
where the owner, Portuguese, whistles
to top 40 songs. The last time Dua Lipa,
I got new rules, I count em as he rung up
energy-efficient light bulbs.
A man on a rent-a-bike w/ Pippi
Longstocking-like braids shouts
something to his woman-friend,
also on a rent-a-bike. There are more
rent-a-bike stalls than places for
local bike owners to lock theirs.
Mine’s locked to a parking meter
in front of the Mayflower Poultry
Company in East Cambridge.
Their other sign, always lit, indicates
LIVE POULTRY FRESH KILLED,
also found on the t-shirts they sell.
The Cambridge/Somerville line bisects
Beacon Street. A Cambridge resident
on this street will get fined for parking
one car over in Somerville & vice versa
—another insignificant border. It appears
the red jerseys lost. They’re coming out
of bars in droves & not singing. I hear
an English accent from more & more red
jerseys, deduce from the affectionately
said, Scouser, Liverpool. Why so many
Liverpudlians here? Two older men
outside the liquor store stare at the tatted
young men w/ huge skateboards & micro-
brews in inked craws. I’m not a fan of heavy
metal, yet glad to see the long-haired
bicyclist with a blaring boom-box
tucked away in his knapsack. Come on
feel the noise…. All the strolling people
don’t know how to act. I resent them,
though I too am not native—
KEVIN MCLELLAN (www.kevmclellan.com/) Is the author of Ornitheology (2019 Massachusetts Book Awards recipient); Tributary; Hemispheres (resides in the special collections in the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona, the University of Buffalo library, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and others); [box] (resides in the Blue Star Collection at Harvard University and other special collections); and Round Trip. He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and Gival Press’ 2016 Oscar Wilde Award, and his writing appears in numerous literary journals. Kevin is also Duck Hunting with the Grammarian—his video, Dick showed in the, 2021 Flickers’ Rhode Island Film Festival, the 2021 Tag! Queer Film Festival, the 2021 Berlin Short Film Festival, and the 2021 Vancouver Queer Film Festival. He lives in Cambridge, Mass.