Connie Wieneke
Over The Fence
over the fence the neighbor has to say he has cancer of the tongue and I say my
uncle as well though I don't say he died but say my uncle was and always will be /
a fireman back when there were not any boundaries and firemen went in blind / how
an alphabet soup poisoned them and only later did my uncle think about all he was
made to breathe how household ash fell to dust his skin and eyes and my neighbor
says his cancer not my uncle’s caused by sex and I am surprised and trying not to think about
that but only thinking my uncle will never call again my birthday morning to say he loves me
or Christmas when I’m spooning waffle batter onto the butter-spattering teflon or
spicing the eggs just right for chiliquiles for friends and I have to tell him I have to
go or I’ll burn breakfast and there’s still the syrup to warm and a third pot of coffee
so I can’t keep them waiting although over the fence we can’t not stop listening
Blackbirds aren’t supposed to be here
not all winter like these old boys / red epaulets on their wings like trail blazes on trees /
like promises to get us from here to there / maybe back again / I want to think they know
what they are about / if not for the way one leads another from a friend’s feeder to mine
and how not think we the witches with our unshelled seeds luring Hansel after Hansel to
our pots / like pipers we woo such avian innocents to a cliff / our largesse theirs to take /
a seaview will always sell and time will tell / still / who really wants to leave / for what ?
if we pander to easy addictions / trade food for a song for the scarlet flash / nothing coy /
here’s break-heart desire / something like those boys who hid / snowballs behind their backs
as if a snowball the best they could come up with / make-believe arrows / boys just waiting
for me to turn back / then my tongue misfires / O Clockwork Ticker says use your words
/ and I tell you how / love’s fists deployed / how mixed messages still are / if only you
there when a boy launched his skateboard at my bicycle wheel / so lucky I broke no bone
but when I teased some tears his face crumpled /and you say it’s tough when everything
gets evaluated / nothing stops me refilling the feeder / leaving meals for nightly skunks.
Connie Wieneke’s most recent or forthcoming work appears in Stand (UK), Pilgrimage, Weber: The Contemporary West, High Desert Journal, Split Rock Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, Talking River Review, and others. Her prose and poetry also have appeared in several anthologies, including Orison 6 Anthology and Rewilding: Poems for the Environment. Family and place fuel her writing. Since 1983 she has lived in Wyoming, where her flock of chickens has dwindled. She received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and two literary fellowships from Wyoming Arts Council.