How to Operate with a Blown Mind

Judith Roney

Work, work, work mantra-every-morning sunrise. Say write like a mother

but you left your kid when he was hurting most, when his eyes-like-yours

welled-up like two featherless chicks cracked too early from the shell

in the house on the five acres where the boy’s father was so good

at mowing but not much else. We won’t talk about the tiny pink fabric

flower in the glass tube, or the cracked-on-one-end fabric bloomed pipe

that cut your lip and had you singing I’m a witch, and soothsaying,

some kind of chick, some anyone. So you move away from everything

you thought was good, or evil, drove yourself mad, drove to the South 65

entrance ramp with two big dogs, ten day-old puppies and the kind of shit

you grab when you clear out a house and going back isn’t an option. Don’t stop

in Kentucky Tennessee or Georgia. Get to Florida where it’s not all sunshine

but more like the bottom of a bag of chips, where all the crumbs sift

to the bottom and you hope no one finds you, and you drink beer

like a mackerel loves running until you find something in the scrub

under the slash pine that looks something like you. Something like you.