His Father’s Voice

Nathan Baker

He was five years old when he fell

Onto the exposed head of a steel cut nail

Gouging a deep symmetrical chunk from

His right knee; bleeding he hobbled

Back to home crying for his daddy

Scared at the sight of his own blood running

In torrents down his bare leg and foot;

It looked bad but it was not life threatening.

His father’s voice quickly comforted him

Lessening his pain as the tears and blood

Dried slowly on his skin; remembering, the

Soldier stood, and with his own body wounded

Returned covering fire for his battered squad

Of the twelve, eleven heard his father’s voice.

They Called Him the Poetry Man

by Nathan Baker

He was always quoting some old school

Dude like Langston Hughes or Robert Warren

Trying to balance social inequities with words

Ever trying to smooth over harsh comments

Made to him by the people he encountered

Each day as he wound his way through city streets.

Most people looked through him like he was glass

A non-person, another one of the many homeless

Disheveled persons littering their inner city.

Many urbanites, verbal in their dislike of his kind,

Openly judged him for not having a more

Lucrative display of wealth adorning his body;

He was kind in his verbal volleys; he would usually quote

The scoffers a few poetic words and graciously smile

We didn’t know he wrote poetry himself until he was gone.

Must have been three or four hundred poems,

Scribbled on napkins and backs of can labels,

He had tucked them away in an old metal ammo box

Marked U.S. Army, with 5.56mm still legible on one side

We found it a few days after he left, half-hidden

Beneath a lean-to of shrub oak and pine saplings

Over in the woods where he had been sleeping nights,

It was beneath two old quilts he used for a mattress.

They were written in a neat hand mostly in pencil,

A few in ink, and fifty or so were written in crayon

Of various colors covering a rainbow of topics

Each one better than the next leaving me feeling

As if I’d just sampled my first pack of Life Savers

One poem, written in orange, tasted like tangerine

As his words brought me back to the corner of 10^th Street

Sharing a single cup coffee waiting for the day to start

The homeless kitchen was closed and between the two

Of us we had enough money for one regular coffee.

So we shared the cup and a tangerine I had in my pocket.

The morning was clear; the sun was coming up golden

He spoke of Rudyard Kipling and quoted a line about virtue

We finished our coffee and parted.

It was a week later when I heard the news, and then

Read the newspaper stories over at the public library

How they’d found him hanging from a train trestle

Over off river road: paper said he’d been there

For a few days exposed to the elements… was it suicide?

County sheriff ordered an autopsy to be performed

Strangest thing happened; when the doctor performing

The procedure cut open his heart to examine it:

Words spilled out onto

The floor and arranged themselves

Into a haiku…

Preacher

by Nathan Baker

Folks on the street called him Preacher
He was a loner, a social misfit bounced
One too many times on his head as a kid,
He had his good qualities and his bad.

Well past his fortieth birthday when our
Paths first crossed back in the early eighties
He was lean and rock solid in physique
An old infantry soldier, he stayed in shape.

He had studied for ministry after service
Obtaining a degree in Biblical studies,
And once thumped leather with black suits;
Still preached a bit on street corners

When he wasn't praying over winos
Down at the Gospel mission on Central,
Or casting demons out of the possessed
Selling favors for dimes downtown

Preacher was good with his hands and
Quick with a knife too, he was aging a bit
So he toted a hawk-bill in his right hip pocket,
An old electrician's knife, honed razor sharp

Preacher was shepherd of the street people
He saved his first soul one night when thugs
Tried to dissect a lamb for anthropological study
Poor little lost one was dumpster diving

Seeking pasture behind a lounge on the boulevard
It was a territorial thing else the thugs had a real
Liking for stale peanuts and moldy nacho chips
Because they were about to get busy when

Preacher walked around the corner talking loudly
To himself about serpents and the Garden of Eden;
Words rolling off his tongue like a rock star on acid
Stars melted into a red flash of color as his knife

Scored across flesh whittling deep to bone
Two of four, in orders to save his one lost lamb,
Preacher did what he did without remorse.
Later paramedics arrived to cart the men away

Preacher watched from a storm drain culvert
His eyes never leaving the scene until the last
Emergency vehicle had left the area.
He lived like a shadow, part of the river fog.

He spent most of his uptime underground
Cross-Creek cemetery became his duomo.

Mary’s Child

Nathan Baker

Barred owl hooting in the side yard

Calling for Mary’s child

Strongman standing beneath live oak

Going to be a hanging after while

Hemp rope thrown across a low hung limb

Calling for Mary’s child

Sheriff of the county’s took a hold on him

Condemned a southern son to die

Sun going down in a red painted sky

Calling for Mary’s child

Blood of another son death must supply

Cicadas shrill, sings a lullaby

Mirror fruit hanging from hate’s glass tree

Mary’s child’s reflection looks a lot like me

Yokohama Bay

Nathan Baker

Bodysurfing is fun,

But not in an ocean of despair,

Where riptides tend to be forceful

And the currents undertow

Can easily drown a weary swimmer.

It’s sort of like spitting into a strong wind

Except your body in this case is the saliva

And salty water the wind which can

Hurl even the strongest swimmer

Like a rag doll beneath its torrential force

Pinning rag to reef’s bottom, as the swimmer

Becomes the proverbial donkey’s tail.

But with ass kicked to near death

It’s still possible to look

Up and find gold glimmering

On the water’s blue surface.

Nathan is a poet living in the mountains of Tennessee. His work has appeared at Red River Review, The Blue House, Underground Voices, The Aroostook Review, and is forthcoming at Word Riot.