I just tripped on bamboo in Trung’s backyard.
It snapped, not too loud, but loud enough
for him to catch me. We’re eleven, playing “VC”
with his four brothers. VC is like Tag,
but if you’re “it,” you have to pretend
to be the Viet Cong. It’s my turn
to be the Viet Cong, but first Trung wants
to tell me something broken and jungledark.
His brothers’ laughter betrays their hiding places.
I don’t have the heart to find them.

Trung tells me about his sister wailing,
looking back home, looking ready to turn into salt;
about their father’s slap on her cheek
followed by a caress on the red spot.
The seasick boat rocks and awaits them.
The latenight air is chilly.

Half of Trung’s brothers have peed themselves.
I’m the Viet Cong, and I can almost smell it.
Ten years later, Trung and I smoke some strong
stinky weed together on break from our different
colleges, and I lose him in the haze. I look
on Facebook and in the phone book.
I’ll never find him.

–Tom C. Hunley,
Scotch Tape World
Accents Publishing

More from Scotch Tape World and Tom C. Hunley:

• “At the Afterlife Bar and Grill”
• “Another Dream of Falling”
• “Um”
• Tom C. Hunley’s “Most Important Thing”
• “Having Banished the Musicians” from Bigger than They Appear

Tom C. Hunley is an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books. Among his previous books are The Poetry Gymnasium (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012); Annoyed Grunt (Imaginary Friend Press, 2012); Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2010, Gold Invitational Series); Octopus (Logan House, 2008, Winner of the Holland Prize); Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five-Canon Approach (Multilingual Matters LTD., 2007, New Writing Viewpoints Series); My Life as a Minor Character (Pecan Grove, 2005, winner of a national chapbook contest); Still, There’s a Glimmer (WordTech Editions, 2004); and The Tongue (Wind Publications, 2004). He divides his time between Kansas and Oz.

 A glass falls and fills the clouds with shards,
a broken window with that old blue and green marble
on the other side, magnified so we almost think
we can go back. A kitten mewing in a woodpile.
A child lost on the street. A mother, panicked
at the police station, her lucky penny tossed
down the wrong well. We can’t do anything
but watch and maybe, finally, get to know
our neighbors. The world was Eden after all,
but after dark, before fire. We never could see
the great Godzilla, but something smelled awful
and our friends kept getting stepped on.
Over a drink, we remember cold nights that froze
our beards. Over another, we recall how sharing
a cigarette was the closest we got most nights to sharing
each other’s breath. The silliness of believing
that sleep and wakefulness were different states.
That I love you and fuck off were antonyms.
Our talk flows like the mighty Mississippi.
Alive, we could never find the right words,
blind dates who said they’d come right back but didn’t.
The barmaid’s an angel, and the low yowl of Mozart
and Mingus’s latest jam rises from the juke box
like a body from a tomb. Alive, I was a radio
that lost reception, I say. There were miracles
everywhere, I say, on earth as it is in heaven,
but my eyes were union workers on their lunch break.
These hot wings are miracles, but everything’s a miracle.
You say, let me tell you something in confidence.
Your voice climbs onto some ledge
that my ears can’t walk you off of.
You say I can’t handle all these miracles.
You drink until you fall down because
it’s way too much for you to stand.

–Tom C. Hunley,
Scotch Tape World
Accents Publishing

More from Scotch Tape World and Tom C. Hunley:

• “Another Dream of Falling”
• “Um”
• Tom C. Hunley’s “Most Important Thing”
• “Having Banished the Musicians” from Bigger than They Appear
• Accents Poets Nominated for the Pushcart

Tom C. Hunley is an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books. Among his previous books are The Poetry Gymnasium (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012); Annoyed Grunt (Imaginary Friend Press, 2012); Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2010, Gold Invitational Series); Octopus (Logan House, 2008, Winner of the Holland Prize); Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five-Canon Approach (Multilingual Matters LTD., 2007, New Writing Viewpoints Series); My Life as a Minor Character (Pecan Grove, 2005, winner of a national chapbook contest); Still, There’s a Glimmer (WordTech Editions, 2004); and The Tongue (Wind Publications, 2004). He divides his time between Kansas and Oz.

Potato chip-colored old man, I don’t know you
or where you pedaled your bicycle as I
drove by, just as birds don’t know anything
of the pockets of air they fly past. We were
on Main Street in Osage, Iowa. I was driving
to see a dying relative for the last time. You
were thin and bald, and in your green windbreaker
you reminded me of a turtle. Driving on was like
turning a page and watching one story become
another. Outside Sioux Falls I saw a white car
so dirt-packed I couldn’t read the license plate,
the way I can’t tell time in my sleep. Later I saw
some cows lazing in front of a “Wear Fur” sign.
I forgot my name and wished I knew yours
as the sun hit the pavement before setting.
I slept in a hotel bed and dreamed of flying
and then falling beneath the sound of my own breathing.
I dreamed of the broad curves of Crazy Woman
Creek Road, which I had driven down days before
as the sky hazed over. I dreamed of dying
but it was like a turtle entering water, the water
creasing and then smoothing itself out. Your eyes
had met mine for a second, and I could have sworn
that something passed between us, as if you
tossed a skipping stone through my window
and it landed flat in my hand.

–Tom C. Hunley,
Scotch Tape World (2013)
Accents Publishing

More from Scotch Tape World and Tom C. Hunley:

• “Um”
• Tom C. Hunley’s “Most Important Thing”
• “Having Banished the Musicians” from Bigger than They Appear
• Accents Poets Nominated for the Pushcart
• “No One to Ask for Directions”

Tom C. Hunley is an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books. Among his previous books are The Poetry Gymnasium (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012); Annoyed Grunt (Imaginary Friend Press, 2012); Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2010, Gold Invitational Series); Octopus (Logan House, 2008, Winner of the Holland Prize); Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five-Canon Approach (Multilingual Matters LTD., 2007, New Writing Viewpoints Series); My Life as a Minor Character (Pecan Grove, 2005, winner of a national chapbook contest); Still, There’s a Glimmer (WordTech Editions, 2004); and The Tongue (Wind Publications, 2004). He divides his time between Kansas and Oz.