David Alec Knight grew up in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. David has had many poems printed in American and Canadian journals and anthologies. His poems have appeared in print and/or on-line in Verse Afire, The Rye Whiskey Review, Cajun Mutt Press, The Lothlorien Poetry Journal (some poems in Leper Mosh appeared in these publications, as well as earlier versions of some poems appearing at allpoetry.com). Recent poems have appeared in the anthologies By The Wishing Tree, Poets For Ukraine Volume 1, and Muse. In 2021, David was recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award for Poetry. His first book of poetry, The Heart Is A Hollow Organ, soon followed. David works in healthcare.
A fire must rise in every cave, cast shadows on element-hewn walls: we live and we love and we cry. Feel serpentine shadows slither from light, pry from the contrast some silken honesty: we live and we love and we perish.
Do not think you’re the only one that feels the words of the songs light and dark: the world will have its way with us. Under the basement light, contemplate the end of the barrel as you stare: the world hasn’t finished with you.
Your heart is too much the cavern with so many places to fall and too far: we live and we love and we fail. Struggle with the secret scripts and tell truth when the entrance is estranged to you: we live and we love and we crawl.
Listen to the words that you only heard, understand and then put the rifle away: pocket a cartridge to remember the overcast; the world will not finish with you before you finish with it.
David Alec Knight grew up in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. David has had many poems printed in American and Canadian journals and anthologies. His poems have appeared in print and/or on-line in Verse Afire, The Rye Whiskey Review, Cajun Mutt Press, The Lothlorien Poetry Journal (some poems in Leper Mosh appeared in these publications, as well as earlier versions of some poems appearing at allpoetry.com). Recent poems have appeared in the anthologies By The Wishing Tree, Poets For Ukraine Volume 1, and Muse. In 2021, David was recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award for Poetry. His first book of poetry, The Heart Is A Hollow Organ, soon followed. David works in healthcare.
The Heart is a Hollow Organ (Cranberry Tree Press, 2021)
My uncle had a swivel diner stool set in ground before creek’s decline. Daily, he used to sit there with his shotgun. I would watch as tiny fireworks of crimson erupted from jays, cardinals, and wrens.
My aunt ran from the house one day: “You need more dead birds like you need a hole in the head,” she said. At this, he halted his barrage and took lower aim at a turtle below. After his shot, the turtle shell sat open to blue sky, a vessel of innards. “Turtle soup,” he laughed, “Turtle soup!”
II.
I was about to poke with a tire iron, a hornets’ nest I found along the creek at uncle’s. Amid barking and a great leap the retriever, Big Ben hurtled toward me. My uncle yelled from a distance I could not see. The jaws of the dog clamped round my hand, forced me with momentum into the dirt, away from the nest that grew in volume.
My aunt screamed like a bigger woman than she was, at a run from her berry patch with hoe in hand. Big Ben loosed the grip of his jaws and my hands freed I flexed scraped fingers and knuckles.
My Aunt’s screams joined the dog’s barks that chided me. My aunt stopped beside us asudden that the hoe came down faster through the air than she could have forced it herself. My uncle leapt up the incline to intercept the hoe’s downward arc with big, bar-room brawl, weld-solder scarred fist. That day, my uncle and his dog seemed immortal, and my aunt, just a little confused.
III.
My aunt’s berry patch was blocked from road-view by my uncle’s garage. Muskrat, rabbit, and raccoon pelts by dozens hung from the rafters. She would go on about how he needed more pelts like a hole in the head.
My uncle’s garage had a mechanic’s pit like the gas-bar at the road’s fork. All along one wall, there were lined up cola bottles from as far back as the ’50s. On the other, clothed pin-ups promoted tools and the passage of time.
I was forbidden to enter the backroom, so I snuck into that sanctum one day. The pin-ups there were nude and Miss August appealed.
IV.
When I was twenty-six my uncle’s dog left this earth. Big Ben, had grown morbidly decrepit so my uncle took him to the field
he had played in since a pup. My uncle said he didn’t cry when he shot him, but I knew he did — I knew to look in his life weary eyes…
Now, my uncle’s weld-solder, scarred hands have no more fine motor grasp. My uncle spends the better part of his days with in-home care.
Doctors needed to make a hole in his forehead quarter size to remove a growth the size of a dime.
He will still sit in that swivel chair by the creek, but with his hands empty.
David Alec Knight is from Ontario, Canada. Recent poems have appeared in Verse Afire, The Rye Whiskey Review, Cajun Mutt Press, and in By The Wishing Tree – A Canadian Poetry Anthology. In 2021, David was recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award for Poetry, 2021. The Heart Is A Hollow Organ (Cranberry Tree Press, 2021) is his first book of poetry. David works in healthcare.
Cajun Mutt Press 