Three Poems – Michael Jefferson

 
 
And Flying Machines In Pieces On the Ground

My neighbor yells at her daughter the way
someone yells at bees and
the potential of the pain that
comes with its sting, just to spite

you. I guess that’s children.
I guess that’s the way I’ve always heard
It to be like that Carly Simon song that
came to life in 3D, over the years

hurricaning toward my parents
loose levees of accumulated grief, catastrophically
collapsing their ninth ward streets.
They hope their kids will stop

starting forest fires that only they
can see and it is frightening but not
as frightening as the window locking
out the last of those vicarious parental

blueprints of second chance dreams.
What if parents only yell because
their children aren’t the
ornaments they wanted them to be

and so they dread the day their word is
not the law and their ambitions
are not in sync with the navigating
iron in the nose and the vicious