…

Chemtrails

….

Sometimes I wonder if I’m remembering all wrong

the things you never did, how tired, how much pain

you were in, so much that you couldn’t be as good

as we needed you to be. 

 

Then sometimes I wonder if it’s just me, and 

your other sons don’t care a lick about moments

like the ones I wish I had but don’t and never will,

and time is funny,

 

hindsight seems to bring you clarity, but it’s more like

since past is past, I have a hold on it like leashed dogs

and can bend it to my will. Which presents a problem

and once again I wonder

 

if I’m blaming you for me becoming the characters 

I’ve played, when it’s really just fate trickling down

from chemtrails and infecting my internal narration

like straw-stuffed metaphors 

 

egging on family conflict. Sometimes I wonder, but

really, I doubt that’s it. 

…..

This poem is from the chapbook Airplane Graveyard by Bryce Johle (Finishing Line Press), and is available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/airplane-graveyard-by-bryce-johle/

Airplane Graveyard retraces the path that brought us here, and questions the way forward. These #poems work through the redefining of masculinity in our living era. What can we keep? What should we change? How can we be sure? These questions are framed in the death of the family dog, getting married, wanting children, and in many memories of the speaker’s family, particularly his Vietnam War veteran father.

Bryce Johle holds a degree in Professional Writing from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. His poems have appeared in publications such as Parentheses Journal, Eunoia Review, October Hill Magazine, Maudlin House, Rabid Oak, and Pennsylvania Bard’s Western PA Poetry Anthology 2023, among others. Originally from Williamsport, PA, he now lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife, Sharayah, and his stepdaughter, Genevieve.