Poetry By Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal

trekkie313 CC




white trash

after he marries his second 
wife, my father moves us 
from the duplex on navarro 
street to a trailer outside
town

there’s a metal bin rusted 
with holes like a machine 
gun behind a pile of brush
and saturdays my father
burns trash 

as though it’s become ritual

inside the bin he builds an altar 
of stained furniture and discarded 
wood then he adds layers of paper 
and old books and appliances 
too cheap to work anymore

sometimes a star trek 
action figure in mint 
condition

he anoints it using gasoline
from the lawnmower’s 
supply 

and with a young firefighter’s
disregard for safety lights
a match and sacrifices 
a few of his bristled arm 
hairs

the way he moves is funny
as though he narrowly escapes 
self-immolation because it’s just 
a step too far in what he is willing
to give up on a saturday 
morning

between the dew steaming 
and the smoke ascending i look
for the face of a promised god 
to rescue me from our mildewed
home

as the flames extend their arms 
in molten praise, my father flees 
into his cardboard home to spit 
tobacco inside a paper-lined cup 
and i watching a plastic jean-luc 
picard melt under heat and pressure
suddenly realize the pile of garbage 
outside our trailer will never 
burn as hot as the trash 
                                                            inside


​

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal (they/them) writes queer, working-class stories, essays, and poems. Their work has been supported by Community of Writers, MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and Tin House. Winner of the Plaza Short Story Prize and Finalist for the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, their creative work can be found in Story, Third Coast, The Masters Review, Fairy Tale Review, F(r)iction, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Other writing appears in the Rumpus, Barrelhouse, New Ohio Review, and additional journals. They are the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology.