ANDREW BROADOUS - POEMS

Andrew Broadous holds a B.A. in English and a certificate in Technical Writing from Southern Utah University. Diversity is important to his creative spirit, which is why he writes genre and literary fiction, poetry, and essays. His nonfiction has been published by The Woven Tale Press, his fiction has appeared in The Kolob Canyon Review, and his poetry has appeared in Eskimo Pie and Literary Yard. In addition to his writing, he is also an avid musician and visual artist and has sold several of his paintings to Southern Utah University. View his work at www.singletearstudios.net.

Loneliness
​

It’s morning, but evening
primroses turn up their hoods 
anyway, quietly concede over 

lips of concrete. On this jog,
the air is damp and bashful, like 
me, like this doe emerging from 

the brush. She crosses my path
and lingers on toy limbs, cocks
her careful head once, then 

never again. No matter how 
hard the step, she halts on the  
fringe of rain like a plush 

ornament, this wild girl too
smart to trust me, too curious
to watch me dart on toward

some unknowable future. It’s
the possibility of knowing 
that keeps her here, her face 

sleek in its wonder, her eyes
spit-shined black. I want her
to find a loneliness in me like

she finds beechnuts, the diurnal
redolence of primrose, of the
kind of rain that hangs like 

static above oak and agave.
Instead, she finds an interloper,
mild-mannered with no agenda,

affords me a final look,
then steals away into a more
natural life without me.

And I continue my course, past this
one rose idea that we truly had
something special.

​

​Growing Pains

​A mother stood on the patio,
watching purple mountains
winking
with a crown of fire,
that bright orb echoing
its colors
over us all.
Her sons
dodged sprinklers as if
they were sputtering white
laser wires.
​
She hid
herself in long gazes
over the valley muted
by creamy blues and ochres.
But she heard them -
her boys -
wet and yelping
a song of summer.
​
Something
in the warm breeze
hit her hard,
buckled her throat and
forced
her head the other way.
She held it there with a
sniffle, mascara floating
below her great
green eyes.
​
       Nothing was the same.
​
       Everything was, for

she turned to see her
little men, growth plates
aching,
their damp and chubby fingers
fishing through foamy sand
that would one day dry
and crack and bleed
crabgrass, knobby roots of other
trees
forgetting the box once
whistled -
sang, even.
​
She hollered out,
Five minutes,
and they kept right on
playing
as she stepped inside a
house
whining with earnest
light and stovetop
chili.
​
A final time she glanced
outside the window,
at the falling
shadows,
the dim sun
lurching stubbornly into
​
       night.

Her

I see her up ahead,
nineteen paces to a girl
I almost know, her
raw umber unfurled
on flannel shoulders.

      A slight turn -
​
She might pirouette
if it weren't so cold,
this girl accustomed
to bright halos in Sun Valley.
Smooth-shaped lips.
Pointy cuspids in a laugh.
Daughter of daylight
and barnwood,
with a Stetson to make her
her father's.
​
     Once more -
​
then a voice unbelonging to
this mountain bluebird.
Deep scarlet locks.
A wrinkle in her name.
​
     I recede,
     feel the gentle
     infarction.

     This caress never was.