Sophomore Sticky: A collection of poems created during my sophomore year of college

A bright yellow ball is thrown.

“Don’t hit the plants!” I yell, a voice bouncing back from off the whitewash garage, my own.

Too late, the toy hits the rim of the thick metal sculpture, pounded into a structure by Tubal-Cain.

It lets out a yelp of pain, a ringing twang.

The entire thing shivers all the way down to its feet buried shallowly in the Georgia clay.

“Get the ball, sissy!” my Bobo calls, hopping from one foot to the other on the cracked driveway.

“Go to the bathroom,” I say as he trots up the stairs to the house, holding down his zipper and butt; he must have the shits.

I walk towards the rock circle, full of green onion grass, popping up through the brown woodchips.

Bobo always likes to move these granite stones, taking them back to the bamboo forest to make little huts for his bugs.

But Dad always ends up breaking it down, putting them back into a wobbly circle like the edges of a frayed rug.

Retrieving the small ball, I shift my weight to my good knee, the one I didn’t tweak in volleyball last game.

And notice how well the copper sculpture keeps Mom’s stargazer lilies, the one’s she got and planted herself back in August, her gift, always the same.

Delicate and clean as antique lace, they catch the rays of the setting sun, like toast getting brown and golden on the brim.

I forgot how the vines are bleeding green onto the precious white flesh-like fingers, the ones holding yellow rings on a whim.

But the light gets caught in the silver spiderwebs that ensnare Dad’s viney hops, the ones that travel up and down and around the copper like matted hair.

Their army green coating can turn black in the morning, looking all bruised and rotten, but I couldn’t care.

The fruit that hangs off the vines tickle the air until it becomes sour with its pungent scent,

now matter how hard the lilies try to perfume the area with their sweet sugar water hint.

I scratch the back of my neck, swatting at a fly that heeds towards the top of hell,

Landing right on the highest leaf, looking like a claw reaching up to grab the purple fractured overcast,

like God bearing down on top of us, like Heaven unsent.