Two Poems

The Mecosta Burnout

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_7/Witbeck1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

The sixty-seven Falcon, black as a court date suit,
shudders on the blacktop as mohawked kids pluck grubbies

from the puddled run-off that washed away
the curled skins of tire-treads.

The driver cracks her suicide-door like a Tall Boy.
The hand she raises can’t close from the busted jaw

she gave her son when she caught him in the woodshed
with the good gin, the neighbor girl.

She strokes the engine, the coo of high-intake manifold.
The crowd, sun cooked and booze wild, hollers

for all she’s got to give. She buries her heel.
The Falcon grinds, side to side,

like a trailer park dog fighting a chain.
She washes the crowd with a wall of white smoke.

The horses are in her chest.

She won’t let go

until everyone knows it.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_7/Witbeck2.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

Grandpa told us about the winter of red snow,

but we already knew the slow math of months
is counted on the ribs. We named
every grain of wild-rice.

I remember the girl, how winter made her
limp, how my shoes didn’t fit
the gnarls of her toes.

She wanted to be full
of anything. She let me taste
her nipples, brown as maple candy.

Bottom round, backstrap, tenderloin.
We named our naked bodies
after cuts of meat.

My hunger was a saltlick.
Her skin, pure venison.

She always cried when she came,
Don’t let me go to waste.