Jed ALLEN teaches English at Phoenix Community College, and is Director of the Phoenix College Creative Writing Program. He is also a pianist, and is working on a project for three spoken voices and piano. His work recently appeared in Alligator Juniper and in the anthology Fever Dreams: Contemporary Arizona Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 1997).

BIRTHDAY

It's dawn
and I'm raking the yard and thinking
jesus I am

fifty-fucking-six and still
won't say
what I need to say-

when suddenly
BAP!
my parents drop

from the trees
like puppets
dragging

their dead toes
through my hair-while back
in the house the boy

pounds out boogie-woogie
on the parlor grand
and never hears the door

creak
as God
slips in-

Little Boy!
and hurling the rake
I scramble madly

for the house but my
old knees lock and christ!
I'm down-just as the kid

roars into Honky Tonk Train
and over my head
the puppets

jig and judder
-Little Boy!-
and round us pale

angels rake up
darkness into piles
to burn

Copyright © Jed Allen, 2001.  All Rights Reserved.
TABLE OF CONTENTS    NEXT PAGE