Writing My Will

~ Brian Dean Powers ~ 8 Comments

Crocus 3-4-21

We sat in the long, rectangular room
with the long, rectangular table topped

with faux marble. Outside the eighth-floor window,
we could see the frozen, snow-covered lake.

The serious young lawyer wrote my responses
in little scribbles to inscribe my will.

I watched words and numbers gather in display
on his snowy-white pages, my life seemingly

reduced to something small and slight.
I went home feeling diminished, home to a night’s

restless sleep. Of course, March will return
to raise the golden crocuses with their rich

inner lives. And if indeed I have few assets
in the companies of commerce

and the company of others,
why should I let that freeze my will?

Copyright 2020 by Brian Dean Powers
Published in the Winter/Spring 2021 issue of Bramble
Photo by the author

The I of the Storm

~ Brian Dean Powers ~ 10 Comments

Hardball
We Americans love our baseball metaphors.
We like to say: “There’s no I  in team.”
Now we watch the news, nervous to learn
what the dead-eye virus pitched today.

Some folks refuse to play ball: “I
won’t wear a mask,” they insist, “I
won’t let you trample my freedom, I
think your experts exaggerate, I

want to party at the bar, I
want to hang with babes at the beach.”
It’s no seventh-inning stretch to say
the dead-eye virus won’t give up the mound,

so every day’s another round of batting
strategy, of what can we do
and where can we go
without getting hit by the pitcher.

Copyright 2020 by Brian Dean Powers
Published in Sheltering with Poems by Bent Paddle Press
Photo by Chris Briggs at unsplash.com

Sean and Brawnie Go for the Best on New Year’s Eve

~ Brian Dean Powers ~ 9 Comments

StageA little before midnight and the beginning of the new year, Sean and Brawnie were sprawled together on the couch under their faded Packers blanket. Despite the bitter cold outside, Brawnie had shucked his shoes and socks under the coffee table.

The boys were watching Schitt’s Creek on TV, where Patrick had just finished singing “Simply the Best” to his partner, David.

“You know, I saw Tina Turner sing that song when I was twelve,” Sean interjected. “That was her 24/7 Tour at the Kohl Center.”

Brawnie scooped up a handful of peanuts, listening intently, though he’d heard his husband tell the story many times.

“She’d just turned sixty,” Sean recalled. “She strut her stuff around the stage for the better part of two hours in heels and skin-tight leather.”

Brawnie took a drink of Prosecco, nodding. 

“I guess I was swaying in my seat a little too much,” Sean remembered. “The woman sitting behind me chuckled and said go on boy, just get up and dance.”

Brawnie laughed. “For you, Tina’s the Patron Saint of Survivors.”

“She made a great life despite abuse and bigotry,” Sean replied.

“Her best life, could you say?” Brawnie asked with a smirk.

On TV, Patrick and David exchanged a look of affection. Sean and Brawnie missed it, giving each other their first kiss of the new year.

Copyright 2020 by Brian Dean Powers
Photo from the 24/7 Concert Tour Video

Sean and Brawnie’s Late Night News-of-the-Day Conversation

~ Brian Dean Powers ~ 9 Comments

Bedspread 3

Brawnie stood by the bed with a quizzical look on his face. “That’s the bedspread you bought this afternoon?”

“You don’t like it?” Sean asked. Already in bed, he was propped up on a pillow, reading.

“It’s just not what I’d expect,” Brawnie explained, carefully choosing his words.

“What’s not to like? It has twelve-point bucks, canoes, pine trees, and mountains.”

“It’s brown and tan,” Brawnie noted. “You’re usually so colorful.”

“It’s manly,” Sean replied with a little smirk. “Like you.”

“That’s pandering,” Brawnie said through a yawn. “But I guess I’ll take it.” 

Brawnie undressed, turned off the light, and got under the covers. “I’ll be glad when the pandemic’s over,” he said wistfully. “I miss going to the gym.”

“Manly man that you are,” Sean replied.

“I saw Eric at the store today,” Brawnie continued. 

“Your workout buddy.”

“He looks like a cocky frat guy,” Brawnie mused, “but the man’s considerate to everyone.”

Sean listened to his husband breathe a while. “Expectations, you know?”

Copyright 2020 by Brian Dean Powers
Photo by the author

Listening to Cicadas

~ Brian Dean Powers ~ 11 Comments 

August already: time to see summer
before it sinks. Beneath bountiful branches

I stand and watch the sunlight soak
through green and breathing leaves. All 

around, like fog in the trees, alarm clocks
ring beneath male cicada wings. And look: 

a current of slick, black ants flows
down the dark drive. Sometimes

I stop to hear the waterfall gushing 
from my window fan, and sometimes

I want to pour it all into words,
lingering to love what can’t be kept.

Copyright 2000 by Brian Dean Powers
Published in 2002 by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets
Photo by the author

Van Gogh’s Bedroom

~ Brian Dean Powers ~ 14 Comments
Van Gogh's Bedroom
The artist returned to the Yellow House in Arles
after painting all day in the fields. Nature
stuck to him like a burr as he walked into his bedroom.
Pale-blue sky seeped into his walls, and the outstretched
wings of crows slipped into the window’s
dark sash-bars. Sunflowers settled
into the center-woven seats of the ocher chairs,
blossoming over the worn path of earth-hued floorboards.
A field of poppies managed to inhabit his red blanket,
but not even nature could make the room contain
the artist’s seismic swirls of moon and stars.

Copyright 2016 by Brian Dean Powers
Published in the Spring/Summer 2017 edition of Word Fountain
Public Domain photo at commons.wikimedia.org

In almost Spring,

~ Brian Dean Powers ~ 14 Comments
Crocus
the green fingers
	of the first crocuses
		begin to pierce

the cold soil, 
	as if reaching
		toward the matted hair

of last year’s grass.
	One bright 
		and gusty afternoon
		
in winter’s last days
	will break
		the thin cataract of ice
		
left on the surface
	of the lake.
		The fist

on the branch-end, 
	as April nears,
		is the spirit 

of my body, too—
	longing to shed
		its confining glove,

to feel the sun’s breath
	singing warmth
		across my veins.

Copyright 1997 by Brian Dean Powers
Published in 1999 by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets
Photo by Tommaso Urli at unsplash.com

Sean and Brawnie Happily Homebound on New Year’s Eve

~ Brian Dean Powers ~ 13 Comments
Snow

“Where did we put those champagne glasses?” Sean asked from the kitchen.

“Try the cupboard above the fridge,” Brawnie replied from the living room couch, where he was sprawled out watching the ten o’clock news.

The eve of the new year had begun with a strange winter rain, that late in the day became sleet, then showers of snow. The sky seemed a gray fleece blanket above flakes weightless in white spacesuits floating slowly down in calm air. The roads and walks were so dangerously iced many wisely decided to stay safely indoors.

The midnight toasts were possibly a bit tipsy.

“No more Christmas until next August!”

“Huck the folidays!”

“May you let your chest hair grow out, muscle boy.”

“And may you chuck your pile of old running shoes.”

Several hours after midnight, Sean and Brawnie were asleep together on the couch, covered by their faded Packers blanket. The room was dark, except for the Twilight Zone marathon on television. An empty bottle of Prosecco and two fancy glasses stood sentry on the coffee table before them.

Outside, galaxies of starflakes gathered under streetlamps on a cold, arbitrarily named night that was beautiful to behold.

Copyright 2019 by Brian Dean Powers
Photo by Catherine Zaidova at unsplash.com