Poetry by Larry Rogers

Don Harder

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Heredity

Growing up in a small
Arkansas town
In the dark ages
Of the 1950s
When your father
And your father’s father
Had required
Shock therapy
You learned to hate
The word heredity

You learned to hate
Those whispering
The word heredity
Behind your back

You learned to hate
Those who asked
How’s your old man
When they knew
He was undergoing
Another round
Of shock treatments

And the way they
Looked at you, watching
For confirmation
Of that old adage
Like father like son

Your first thought
Was to suggest
They all go to hell
But a young boy
Talking like that
Would have been
The confirmation
They were looking for

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Coping

I’m whiskey drunk
and whistling Dixie
past a Confederate graveyard
in a piney woods town,
limping toward a boarding house room
where tonight, my first night
back in the Real World, I’ll be grateful
for the hissing and rattling
of a radiator that distracts me
from the constant shelling in my head,
and grateful for the sirens on
the street outside that boarding house
that distance me from the sound
of small arms fire in my head.
I’m whiskey drunk and whistling Dixie
past a Confederate graveyard
in my hometown; collar turned up against
the wind that isn’t blowing.

Bio: Larry Rogers is a poet-singer/songwriter. Golden Antelope Press recently published a full-length collection of his poems titled "Live Free or Croak." It's available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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