One time their dad slapped his wife so hard
the neighbor’s wife felt it on her cheek.
You ever drank hot dog water? the son
my age asked me once.

He’d been over for hours and managed
to break a couple of toys while putting
me in a headlock tightened like a vice.

There was a brother in Vietnam, a sister
with a perpetual Kool-Aid stain on her upper lip,
while their mom drank cheap wine
every day. That’s how it was.

The old man cycled from job to job
and sat at night on their front porch,
can of Schlitz in hand, looking sullen and mean.

One day, the son beckoned me to their backyard
because he’d shoplifted a Playboy from a drugstore.
This is how you look at these things, he said, unrolling
the centerfold like a scroll that held the secret to everything.

When they moved away, my parents
exhaled and prayed for better neighbors.
Meanwhile, all I could think about
was that headlock and all that flesh.

About the Author:

Bruce Gunther is a former journalist and writer who lives in Michigan. He’s a graduate of Central Michigan University. His poems have appeared in the Remington Review, the Dunes Review, Modern Haiku, the Comstock Review, and others.