Charlie Brice writes

The Truth About What Could Have Happened

I never caught her name.

After coffee, after a silence

that stood between us like

an unexploded landmine,

she left my trailer with

neither a kiss nor wave.

Budweiser, peanut butter, and

a Camel for breakfast—

they say life is short.

Outside the welfare office

I wait for the work truck.

I’ll cut pulp in the UP today.

On the way to the bridge

we pass birches, cedars,

aspens, and evergreens,

but it’s the jungle in Nam

that haunts me: the weed,

the smack, the blood mist

when I scored a hit—22 kills

that I’m sure of—all that

I was ever good at.

Tonight, I’ve got enough

for a six-pack and half the rent.

I knife into the peanut butter jar.

After the jobs, rehabs, and relapses,

mother threw me out. When she died

she left her money to the church—

the only place it could do any good.

Someone slaps the trailer door.

It’s the woman. “I thought

you could use this,” she says,

hands me a bucket of KFC.

Inside I pass her a beer.

The chicken’s crispy good.

Charlie Brice writes

The Truth About Paper

Sometimes a god or whomever puts lines on it    or maybe tiny squares

I never understood the tiny squares

Sometimes it feels like silk    soft enough to caress a tushie

Sometimes it’s shiny like the Sears and Roebuck catalogues that hung from nails in

old-timey outhouses

That’s irony

Sometimes you roll it    pack it with herbal bliss    light it up     pass it around

Other times you create smoldering suicide tubes   misty mistakes that cause life to

slowly evanescence

For me it’s a lover who always beckons    ready to receive the demands of my pen

Never acts insulted when I scratch away words and lines I no longer like

or put Xes across stanzas that displease me

Never acts violated by the ink I smear across its pure white brow

Always generous with its space    patient with my restless revisions and edits

Graciously it rests on my writing table   a carpet for my whims and nasty grudges

Profound below its milky surface   it waits

Charlie Brice writes

The Truth About Shadows

Our sweet poodle

Mugsi chases shadows

as we all do,

according to Plato,

in our craven caves.

The birds and butterflies

that produce those shades,

are fundamentally uninteresting

to her. She wants their anti-

reflections on our lawn.

I ask our son, Ari,

why Mugsi continues

the pursuit when

she never captures

a single shadow.

Maybe, Ari says,

she doesn’t want

to catch those shades.

Maybe she just wants

to chase them.

What of my lifelong pursuits?

I studied philosophy because

I’d never arrive at THE answer,

psychology because there will

never be THE theory of theories,

literature because no one will

ever write THE novel that ends

all novels or THE poem that

makes other poems redundant,

irrelevant.

That’s when I realize

that Ari has given me a gift,

taught me something essential:

the difference between Aristotle’s

telos and the Buddha’s moment.