A Poem by Dawn Cunningham — Sons and Daughters

The Beatles Snore Out the Paint of Their Guitar and Smell Bishop John Darcy’s Blessings Surgically Removing Anthony Wayne’s Groins
After Patrick Lawler

Between the cities everything looks naked in our ears.
Guitared through the paned window, We’re hungry.

We sleep under a car hood
snoring for the engine to shut off.
Our sleep is the engine.

It’s just like “Lucy in the Sky”—except it’s prescribed.

We’re driving Chevrolets through our house
and snort engine fluid to kill the thirst.
Oil communes our internal systems. Armor All.

As our hands
oil another,
We think it’s
a rainbow singing
God’s prayer.

We wake canticlizing the neighbor’s siding.
They are the rats
of tow trucks we always drown.

And the cats moan:
“We are not leftover scraps losing our way.”

A makeover is colorizing Engineer John and he’s painted.
A makeover is colorizing Chief Little Turtle and he’s graying.
Crayons. Winners’ bread : colorizing
—knowing black ‘n’ white is blind.

We’re driving by “last stop here.”
The many items We have are scrapped out pieces of dust, rust, and lust.

We smell.
Sky.

And We haven’t forgotten.

We close down the route of highway 69
and exit the revolution of Fort Wayne through Wayne and Darcy.
We get torqued at this escape.

We have grown
knowing the Diocese thickened our veins but we had Chevrolets this way.

Here the engine changes hours.

The chalice implodes.
Pilgrims like duplexes out of Armor All.
Rainbow smears. Novae. Reverse.

The hour of changing engines. Magical wilderness.
Finishing the escape, We’re hungry for the neighbor’s siding.
The crabgrass where our manure absorbed oil. This will change.

Sky

Sky.
Sky.
We smell the hallelujahs around us and wish history never knew.

Dawn Cunningham writes to explore herself, a situation, others ideas, and to find truth. Her writing comes out of the joy of oral storytelling taught to her by Gran’ma Ginny through the Native American tradition. Recent publications include #GRIMOIRENOIR, Voice of Eve, Cliterature, an upcoming novella publication, and a full length poetry book publication, Required Silence, by Whapshott.