Four Poems
by Thomas M. McDade
Working Two
Poached eggs on wheat
Please Britt and hot
Take your time dear
Pregnant and tattooed
Apron full of bucks
Some think G-string
Fetus training in her gyre
Music, yells and cheers
Never jolting mom awake
Never shaken or bruised
Immune to aircraft noise
Imagine men’s ovations
At belly button popping
A lone home goldfish
Is fading so paint tulips
On nails to brighten
The atmosphere
Paling blue eyes also
To match new paisley ink
Christ, I remember
The confessional box
Too tight for you
Saturday Benediction
Hymn you loved Holy
God We Praise Thy Name
Cherubs flash on
Federal Housing bricks
Fuzz choppers searching
Their lights responsible
Some call them guiding
Something Needs Hiding
There are ten ships left in the Ghost Fleet but not visible from the shore. Just forty Interstate miles east rosemary in the witch’s garden is still fragrant but I can’t pick anything up from the wormwood that’s strongly linked to the spirit world. What’s this? Lamb ear or tongue? Either way, it will protect you. A woman walking a beagle has a flower tattoo on her chest but who’d dare focus long enough to name it? Her friend’s upper arm art is more accessible but who could decipher? The river vessels can be approached by boat only. Pamphlet says keep 500 feet away. Grass and weeds cover parts of the rusty decks yet no mention of witchy herbs but what potent hints for tattoos as well as hexes flare out to treat field glass eyes. A cormorant four times the size of a raven lands on a mast and spreads its wings as if something needs hiding.
What Bird Would Nest?
Just past a dead
Streetlight a wild
Dark evergreen
Eerily like an alien
Robot in darkness, fog
Or my failing eyesight
Is nearly round and juts
Out abutting the sidewalk
But its roots have yet
To crack the asphalt
Making walking risky
As other specimens have
Ants are drawn to
Those fissures to build
Perfectly constructed
In harm’s way hills
Today a possum lies
Dead as if the monster
Had scared it to death
Or caused a driver
To accelerate
Instead of slowing
Or braking
Skunks, deer, foxes
And raccoons have
Also been sacrificed
At that tree’s altar
And the Inquisitions
Of moon scythes
And wind clippers
Have run out
Of answers
Double Feature
Once a Locomotive
Assembly Plant
It houses twenty
Cinemas now
In the Parking lot
You could
Get lucky
For the rails
Have not strayed
An Amtrak
Might just pass
Headlight aglow
Like a score of
Projector beams
And first
Timers might
Wonder if
Their tickets
Will be ripped
Or punched
BIO: Thomas M. McDade resides in Fredericksburg, VA, formerly CT & RI, He is a graduate of Fairfield University. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran serving ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Dam Neck Virginia Beach, VA and at sea aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and USS Miller (DE / FF-1091). His poetry has most recently appeared in GloMag, Otoliths Review, Cajun Mutt and Nerve Cowboy. His only social media is Facebook.