Full With Love
Sometimes the littlest things can set us off: a vegetable, a sibling’s smile, the taste of a certain beer, imagining someone who’s gone is still here. Maybe love lives that low—all the way down to the molecular level of the everyday.
MY DEAD FATHER RIDES SHOTGUN AGAIN
Driving three hours home from
the mountains, on I-40, my long-gone
father suddenly appears in the passenger seat.
I look over and nod, and he nods back,
as optimistic as a man on the first night
of a three-day R&R pass, a smile on his face,
an unlit cigarette between his lips, and while
I have a hundred questions I want to ask,
for a little while we just drive together again,
enjoying one another’s company.
Carrots
We wanted biscuits for breakfast,
but instead it was expired carrot sticks
from the Winn Dixie on 52nd Street
where Mom worked. We crunched
a gazillion through my childhood,
so many our skin turned orange,
and the school nurse, Mrs. Lupisky,
called home and Mom told her to mind
her own damn business unless she planned
to start providing food for our family.
Moving out, I vowed to never eat another,
and didn’t for a decade, until Julie’s mother
set the roasted carrots on the table our first
Thanksgiving together, and I had to excuse
myself, stepped away into the bathroom,
and sobbed for five minutes. You wouldn’t
think a carrot had that sort of power, but then
you didn’t live my life, one full with love
and music and carrot after goddamn carrot.
STANDING IN LINE AT THE HARRIS TEETER CHECKOUT
This guy in front of me in cut-off shorts, flip flops,
and a faded REO Speedwagon T-shirt, looks over
his right shoulder, asks if I have a dollar he can
borrow, says he thought this case of Busch Light
was still on sale but it’s not. I give him the dollar,
and he says I’ll pay you back next week, and I say,
I’m counting on it. He smirks at me as if not sure
whether I’m joking, pays, half waves as he walks away.
When the cashier, this bright little blonde teenager,
asks, Are you alright, Mister?, I realize I’m tearing
up as I watch him go. I say I’m fine, but don’t tell her
my dad used to drink Busch Light, and I remember
the two of us driving to the Piggly Wiggly on 19th
Street, after the divorce, how he’d let me carry his
beer around the store as he picked up hamburgers
and hot dogs, a couple bags of pretzels and Corn Flakes.
I walk over to the store’s wide front window
and search for the man in the REO T-shirt,
but the parking lot is busy and she calls me back
to the register, says, That’ll be $79.52, Sir.
By the time I make it outside, I know I’ll never
find him again, but that doesn’t stop me from looking.
FOR MY SISTER WHO SPLIT MY HEAD OPEN
that summer day, long ago,
after I’d taken a picture of her
with my father’s black Polaroid
as she ate a ham and cheese
sandwich at our kitchen table.
She said, Give me that, meaning
the photo slowly processing
as I shook it back and forth.
I said, No, and she dropped her
sandwich, chased after me.
An hour earlier, I’d seen her
having sex with this four-eyed
dork name Dave, his hairy
white butt going up and down
and the soft pink of her feet
pointing straight to the sky.
I stood at her door for maybe
ten seconds, amazed and sickened
at what I’d seen. I was twelve at the time.
I disappeared into my room
into Lord of the Rings until I heard
Dave’s car pull out of the drive,
then met her in the kitchen
where she was eating her
sandwich. When she asked if I
wanted one, I said, no thanks.
What I wanted was a photo of her
dark hair still a mess, her cheeks
flushed pink, her smile more open
and alive than I’d seen in years.
After I snapped the photo, she
chased me around the house, and pushed
me. I fell into the corner of the bathroom door,
splitting my head open. There was plenty of
blood, two towels and thirteen stitches worth.
Now, decades on, my hair is thinning,
so the scar is visible but faded.
I think sometimes about how happy, contented,
she looked eating that sandwich, and how
for reasons I still don’t understand I couldn’t
let her simply have this moment of joy.
About the author
Steve Cushman is the author of three novels, includingPortisville, winner of the 2004 Novello Literary Award. He has published two poetry chapbooks, and his first full-length collection,How Birds Fly, won the 2018 Lena Shull Book award. His latest collection,The Last Time,was published by Unicorn Press in 2023. Cushman lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, and works in the IT department at Cone Health.