Brian Dean Bollman

Two Poems

Bobby

Bobby was abandoned by his mother as a child

Bobby wandered about town playing hide and seek until he found
his father who carried him to bed

Bobby’s father gave him green and grey army men and left him
alone in his room to play for hours

Bobby taught himself to write and draw and thus he passed the years

Bobby thought his testicles were baby birds that he cupped in his
hands

Bobby wondered when they would fledge and fly away

Bobby worked in a planter by a parking lot

The pavement stretched into the distance like a charcoal lake and
the cars shimmered on its surface



Cat’s Nest

Bobby heard mewling when the sprinklers came on

Bobby found a cat’s nest with black newborns wet from birth and
irrigation

Bobby thought the parking lot was their father

Bobby felt sad when they cried in the rain and wished for their
mother to move them away to a dry place

Bobby went to look at them when the sprinklers stopped

Bobby came up silently to the nest and peered in under the Azalea

The mother hunched over her kittens like a charcoal tent licking
the water off their bodies

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