Poetry by Linda Scheller

              Christian Collins CC



​
Late Afternoon


A scab has formed
the color of my hair,
the color of sunset
on the feedlot. 
Crop dusters 
strafe the roof
unfurling sheets
of pesticides
that sting my tongue.
I look up from
my phone, message
half-finished
like the journal
I shared with Emily
until she died
two months before
her fourteenth birthday.
My mother drifts in
and a cat yawns
on the dirty sill.
Across the road
a tractor hums
harrowing the field.
My mother is boiling
water, and through
the curtain of steam
her face writhes
white and empty.
The lid descends.
She disappears
down the hall again
and the bedroom door
clicks shut.
Past the sleeping cat
motorcycles roar
toward the mountains.
My mother reappears
coughing, eyes slack,
lips wet. She pushes
a button and Jimi howls
All along the watchtower
and she says, as usual,
“Don’t forget to play this
at my funeral.” 

Outside Molly barks,
Molly who saved me
from the attack rooster.
One scream drew orange
lightning knocking him
off his spurs, breaking his neck
with one snap. I hated 
my mother’s chickens,
filthy things. I’m glad
the weasel came
and killed them all.

“Mom?” 
She doesn’t answer,
doesn’t hear me 
over the music.
The light from sunset
tinges the kitchen 
red. The knife blade
flashes as my mother
repeatedly stabs the roast.





​
San Joaquin River:  Summer


It’s one of those days when the dead surface
bloated with failed ambition, glittering
with lost potential. Gentle souls
gravitate toward breaking glass, 
the scream of sirens, last gasps
and so it is that we, the haunted, 
the naïve, stagger, later floundering in bed
adrift a raft of dreams. The current
must flow downstream; winds must
sheer. Watch the banks for portents, 
the depths for clarity, the surface 
for suggestions. What fish
lurk at the bottom, waiting? 
What birds ride the willow branches
and nestle into quiet corners, brooding?
​

Linda Scheller is a California Central Valley author, educator, and radio programmer whose poetry and book reviews are published or forthcoming in Terrain, Rise Up Review, Gingerbread House, The Inflectionist Review, Pif, Oddville Press, The American Journal of Poetry, and Entropy, among other publications. In 2017, FutureCycle Press published her full-length poetry collection, Fierce Light. For more information, please go to lindascheller.com.

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