Cody Shrum
Nowhere Sunday
The wind flicks our boat around the lake
like smoothed pucks on a shuffleboard.
Dad puts me in charge of navigation.
Which means I dick with the trolling motor
and cuss openly every so often.
Grandpa’s line breaks. Breaks again.
Each time, my little brother must pause
his fishing, use his young vision to see
the line through each narrowing eye
and tie Grampa’s jig with Palomar knots.
Back home, I’m busy, behind, essays
stacked, flower beds weed-infested.
The front steps of my house
crumble, concrete disintegrating
like Styrofoam in gasoline.
But out here, grandpa snores. Dad reels
in the biggest fish of the day. Sun
warms skin, tobacco buzzes lips. Dalton
and I recite movie quotes, annoy Dad,
like we’re back in elementary school,
and that’s all we ever had.
Cody Shrum is a writer and editor based in Kansas City. He holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cody’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in such journals as BULL, Cleaver Magazine, Identity Theory, Harbor Review, Rust + Moth, and the Midwest Quarterly, as well as the anthology, Kansas Time + Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry.
11.1