Father and Son - Tim Payne

Out past the castaway skeletons

of train tracks and chicken farms,

my father and I cut through the drifts,

hunting a gut to puddle

in its own warmth, clumsy bag

to break apart with hissing metal

on velvet. I see a cherry snow cone

blooming between haunches,

can hear children somewhere laughing.

Imagine the surprise, buckshot,

aptly named, bounding through an abdomen

like seeking cover in the understory,

picking through the brush and clearings

of an innermost, soon-to-be

non-being, some undisclosed corner of God.

A knife click taunts the stillness.

My father says do it here.

Field Dressing, like we could stretch

for miles, grow large enough

to bind these woods with our bodies.

Build into me a calm heat.

So far from town, and so cold,

tired knuckles of frost shake

from that stiffness with every thrust,

the blade and the wet splayed open

along rocks with no eyes to close

or witness what we ruin for each other.

Originally published in Georgia Tech’s Terminus (10), Print

Tim Payne published a few poems in Terminus Magazine, but that was some time ago. He had kids somewhere in there. As such, much of his work focuses on the insanity and beauty that is the stewardship of children. He realizes that's not everyone’s thing. But it has become unavoidably his.