All the Little Blows

Father pressed his handkerchief against the gash,
allowing blooms of purple-red to invade the white.
All men carried handkerchiefs in those days, folded 
in their back pockets, which they opened with a snap, 
unfurled like top sails, moonraker or a moonsail or
the hope-in-heaven. Unlike Jay Follet, whose accident 
left a tiny crescent but no blood, my wound gushed.
Unwinding from monkey bars, I’d bonked my head. 
Now, the blows come in clusters. Age insults a body. 
I envy Follet’s Knoxville night, that single blow 
to the chin, his instant death, the way his body just 
sailed to the side of the road. Landed on his back, 
barely rumpled his church clothes. “Like snapping 
off an electric light…” they told the children.

JANE POIRIER HART

Jane Poirier Hart is a poet from the Boston area. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poems and flash fiction have appeared in Los Angeles Review, Southern Poetry Review, the Worcester Review, Ocean State Review, Lily Poetry Review, MER Vox Folio, SWWIM, and Drunk Monkeys.