Three Poems
Michael DuBon
Crush
I wandered
the apartment parking lot
and smashed my oblong reflection
in empty Crush orange soda bottles.
My little boy strength against walls,
bursting open each crushing pressure,
like all the broken glass at home,
shining on the kitchen floor,
glinting and embedded in dad’s bloodied fist–
and then a man’s voice boomed,
Asking, “Who is going to clean that up?”
and I ran until I tripped over a dead cat–
A woman scolding me as I rose,
Asking me how I would like to be dead.
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December Baby
I’m blue,
and a little more blue.
It’s the way ice shatters,
slivers consumed
by water.
The way I let myself drown,
Tethered to me.
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Look Your Way
My mother commanded
When mal-born feet tripped over a fallen branch.
I didn’t always watch where I headed in the Tahoe forest;
Me, a lost boy grown into a lost man.
I earned a smack to the back of the head
When I insisted my eyes close as I took my next step.
She asked if I needed a reason to cry.
She said she’d give me one.
Maybe I can’t gaze forward.
Michael DuBon is a first-generation US citizen of Guatemalan descent and a first-generation college graduate. His poetry has appeared in The Meadow, Rising Phoenix Review, and The Museum of Americana, and his creative nonfiction has appeared in The Plentitudes, Heartwood, and Under the Gum Tree. He holds an MFA from Saint Mary’s College of California and an MIS from Southern Utah University, and he is currently Tenure Track English Faculty in the English Department at Everett Community College. He is currently working on publishing his memoir: The DuBonicles and his poetry book Ayersterday’s Newsticias. At his most natural, he is laughing and smiling like no one is watching—because he’s usually by himself anyway.