My Birthday Card
is a burly, three-legged bear wearing a polka party hat. GoldieBear and his Three Legs hope your birthday’s just right! When it arrives four weeks early, my first thought is you’re drinking again and simply spaced on my date. One of my earliest memories of us: we’re drunk on your dad’s poorly hidden vodka, sitting on your kitchen floor, and eating Tang powdered drink mix by the handful. Howling and laughing we fall over, because the vibrant orange drool running from our mouths is the funniest thing we’ve ever seen. Poets love to wax about Li Po’s legendary death. In a boat, drunk, he fell overboard and drowned trying to hug the moon’s reflection. Other drunks die less poetically, like in a closet with a belt. I never saw it coming. Dear friend, who I love like a brother, you bastard. Who sends a birthday card as a way of saying goodbye.
~
Rabbit Holes
Day 15
Nobody knows exactly when the check engine light came on in his dad’s head. They woke and he was gone, disappeared down a rabbit hole, one where Sandy Hook didn’t happen, where children’s bodies weren’t torn apart and crisis actors are still getting checks in the mail. Word gets around. Everyone calls him Rabbit Boy. Near the hole’s edge, he sits on the ground doing homework. Bike beside him. Some families have tiny bonfires, huddle like refugees around their hole. Some have tents, stay overnight. Some holes are adorned with wreaths, picture frames. In the distance, prayer warriors make a kind of murmuring hum. He thinks, cicada. Five holes down, a girl with purple hair waves at him. Nervously he waves back. Murder kittens begin clawing inside his stomach.
Day 44
Rabbit Boy wonders how many last straws you give someone. If it’s someone you love, you can always find more last straws. His mom, though, finally ran out when his dad, face red with truth, told the Macksons that Covid is a hoax, Normies! They straight up put the con in consensus reality with that one! Their child had died of Covid. In the early days, his mom’s crying undid him, was non-stop, a sound like high tension wires mourning. He imagines purple hair girl is so perfect she’d never do anything that’s anyone’s last straw. As dusk bleeds across the field, he lights the red, white and blue Come Back candle. A Walmart exclusive. Every hole has one; the field is a constellation of tiny hopeful flames.
Day 52
Everywhere he looks the ground boils with black holes. Purple hair girl is walking toward him. She is wearing a Birds Aren’t Real t‑shirt that hangs almost to her knees. He stands and dusts himself off.
“Birds aren’t real?”
“My dad gave it to me. I don’t know what it means.”
“Oh, I thought it was a band.”
Grinning she says, “Are you real?” and pokes him in the chest.
“Yup, for now. Pretty real still.”
“I’m Gabby.”
“Oh, Camo. Cam I mean. My dad calls me Camo.”
“Who’s down there?” she asks. He makes a diving gesture toward the hole.
“My dad.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“She won’t come. We’re estranged. From my dad. That’s what she says.”
“Oh, e s t r a n g e d.” She says the word slowly as if he’s revealed the answer to a great mystery.
He doesn’t know what the word means but it feels right because everything feels strange. When he’d asked his mom what was wrong with dad, she took his chin in her hand and said with pained gravity, “Cam, darling, he’s become a full-blown moron. I’m sorry. Hang in there.” Shadows grease the far edges of the field now. He’ll bike home soon, knows the porch door screen will be thick with June bugs drunk on the light, that he’ll have to slowly crack open the door and slip inside or he’ll set them off in a swarm around his face. This is what it feels like talking with his mom about his dad; he has to be careful what he says so she doesn’t fly apart. In bed, as he begins to fade, he imagines tracing his finger around Gabby’s lips.
Day 75
Every hole is a drain those left behind circle every day. As he stares out across the field, a woman starts screaming, slapping her head like she’s on fire, then throws herself down a hole. A beefy man with arms the size of legs stares at the ground where she’d been standing, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Rabbit Boy’s days are spackled together with endless waiting, with unwavering loyalty. On his way to the field, he passes Chik-fil‑a. Every day, someone in a black and white cow suit is on the curb, frantically dancing, flashing a sign that reads Eat Mor Chikin. He thinks all of this waiting, the numbing monotony, is somehow preparing him for the dancing cow job. If he did that, would Gabby think he’d become unreal?
Day 99
Biking back, Rabbit Boy thinks even if his dad comes back, pops out, smacks his lips and says, What’s up, Doc?, it won’t be the dad he wants; the dad who found a stray dog when they were hunting last fall, and cooed as it greedily woofed down slice after slice of the beef jerky he gave it, and looked like he might cry as he cleaned the blood from its neck and paws; the dad who brought him home, nursed him back to health, even sat in the tub with him for baths until he wasn’t scared of the water, and named him Shambles.
When he gets to his hole, Gabby is walking toward him with her mother, lawn chairs tucked up under their arms.
“We have holes for dads,” she says with a shrug. “We’re leaving.”
“Oh, leaving leaving?”
“Leaving leaving,” she says back. Walking past him, she playfully pokes him in the chest again.
“Don’t be estranger,” she winks.
Watching her walk away, he reaches deep into his pocket, feels around for another last straw and starts to cry when he finds the pocket utterly empty except for his shaking hand.
~
Keith Woodruff lives in San Antonio, TX and tends a backyard full of moody tomato plants. His poetry has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, New World Writing Quarterly, and Rawhead. His flash in Wigleaf, Does it Have Pockets?, JMWW, Identity Theory and is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel and Heavy Feather Review. His tomatoes have appeared on pasta and sandwiches. Read him in BSF 2017, 2019 and at www.keithawoodruff.com. He was awarded a 2018 Pushcart Prize. @keithwoodruff.bsky.social