Rolling by Oak Morse

                        Alexander Rabb CC



Rolling 

When I was eight, living in the homeless shelter
my aunt brought me rollerblades.

So, I rolled 
pass the ditch, the crooked-neck mailbox
the fire ants marching out the cracks
the busted Budweiser scattered on the concrete
the stretched-out fence, the backwoods
where I got the poison oak
made my hands look like those chicken house workers
rolled pass that run-down park with the broken swing--
those two chains dangling from heaven.

I rolled up the street in the cut 
where Mama smoked with the white folk,
rolled up by that vine tree where I had to
hand-pick my own switches
then down passed that bloody wrecked
table silently yelling for refuge onside the road
rolled pass that old station wagon
that cries off its color—it seems like
being brown always comes with some sort sorrow.

I rolled through the blue and black alleys
pass the sewer peering at me,
pass the shack where I bunk at night
with worldly people who I was told to call family
when I have an aunt, who lives acres away
trying to make it herself
who brought me rollerblades.

Figure I roll my way right up out of here
right into a brighter rendezvous.

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Poet and theater instructor Oak Morse was born and raised in Georgia. He was the winner of the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry in Pulp Literature as well as a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Awarded the 2017 Hambidge Residency, Oak’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Indianapolis Review, Star 82 Review, Menacing Hedge, Nonconformist Mag, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. Oak has a B.A. in Journalism from Georgia State University and he currently lives in Houston, Texas where he teaches creative writing and performance and leads a youth poetry troop, The Phoenix Fire-Spitters. (@oak.morse)

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