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ISSN 1556-4975 
 

Poems by David McCoy.

David B. McCoy is a Social Studies teacher in a township school near Massillon, Ohio, and an ordained member of the Spiritual Humanist Clergy. Since 1979, David has run Spare Change Press, which in 2007 went to a web-based format for its Solo Flyer. David is the author of Ohio Wineries Guidebook, Geometry of Blue, Voices from Behind the Mask and the Internet books Buffalo Time and The Book of Afternoon Naps.

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Giotto.

A transparent image
of a bell with wings

—effortlessly soaring at
a forty-five degree angle—

hovers above my son who
is sitting on the couch

eating green grapes
from an orange bowl.

I try to imagine
how Giotto would

paint such a scene in
his primary pastels

with all lines leading to
a thematic focal point.

But what would be the
thematic focal point?

The child? The grapes? No,
the transparent image

of the bird crashing through
a transparent piece of sand

to a higher / saintlier world.

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Spring Harvest

Spring begins
the same
each year,
no matter
how well we've
picked fields
clean
years prior.

 

The earth
seems
to send them up
through its
thin skin
of dirt
like

 

boils
sweat
a wart.

 

Each year
before planting,
we walk
behind
carts
harvesting
more rocks.

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BIRDING

Some men need hobbies
to save them from their wives.
Fishing and hunting
take too much effort.
In my family, drinking
at the local bar is suicide.
Fixing up old cars
has never appealed to me.
Stamp or coin collecting?
It's best just to get out of the house.


Birding—that's a safe one;
you don't even need to learn
the names, the calls.
Just get out of the house,
take a flask, and return
home prattling on about
the blue jays, those damned
grackles, or the arrival of red-
winged black birds.


On those mornings after an argument,
you can return and go on for hours
Truth is, in the end it doesn't much matter:
you both know why you're really out there.

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END OF THE AFFAIR



...and you had a dream?

We sold our house and bought something rustic, out of the way.

It was a two-story place, maybe three, maybe as many floors as my dream
required.

One room was filled with red gasoline cans, thus the house soon caught

fire
and burned to the ground.

Once the fire was out, I discovered a room somewhere above the second
floor.

—It still contained items belonging to the previous owners.

When I pulled the bed covers back to change the sheets, I discovered a
knife.

 

...and the knife symbolized something disturbing to you?

No, that's not what I found so disturbing; it was the box of melted
condoms.

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