WILLIAM C. BLOME - POEMS

William C. Blome writes poetry and short fiction. He lives in-between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he once swiped a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously appeared in such fine little mags as PRISM International, Fiction Southeast, Roanoke Review, Poetry London, and The California Quarterly.

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UNTITLED
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​Lazy leopards are a reality here, make book on it,
but they have nothing to do with extinguishable statements.
(That’s right, extinguishable statements, you didn’t hear it wrong:
they’re utterances excited and heated enough
for the speaker to get doused by your fireman husband,
pompous he of the neighborhood volunteers.)
But again, it’s the leopards that are the reality here,
and it’s in nothing save their grudging leaps
that these laid-back cats present a proof
that the trunks and branches they brush against
get hot enough to glow for days on end.  

IN PHILADELPHIA
​

​I’ll tell you straight, I don’t think anyone’s going to be fooled by your trying to pass small, flat, circular stones as coins or tokens through the slots of Philadelphia. Oh if I ponder it a tad more, I’ll likely grant that when and if you paint ‘em silver, you’ll have no trouble getting them taken in change by someone in person, someone like wife number one. She was always talking down and into her headlights, always calling me Stoney, and often, often claiming I stayed alive just to now and again deposit and/or smash into the coinboxes of several laundromats off Roosevelt Boulevard. (Sure you do—of course you do—you know the ones: the tumblers and dryers that are cattycorner to the old Good and Plenty plant that still dominates Germantown Avenue).

UNTITLED
​

​Eating creamed corn mucho awkwardly from the can
and with a teaspoon at the steering wheel, as my Volvo
(with some prodding from the corgis on my right)
noses once more toward Pennsylvania as well as Sweden--
so now’s the time I choose to demand you reach over
the front seat and give me my hand back and stitch up
the bleeding stump-of-a-wrist. You’re also going to have
to lose the sickle before we greet my mom and dad
on the slope of their Scranton driveway and then walk
arm-in-arm (with the mutts on leash) and go inside
to chomp on scones and pickled sundries, and it’s later on
we’ll all line up and then on the twitch of my shoulder,
we’ll stomp floorboards in the hallway and the bedroom.

WITHIN A GROVE
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​Within a grove—that is, somewhat near the center of a square of tall trees—you don’t have to shout for heavily-muscled laborers to lay down their jackhammers for a moment or two so you can verify the sound of blue jays nearby, several blue jays daring a single flicker to keep pecking at a pack of melba toast till only the cellophane wrapper remains to blow away in the breeze: O you don’t have to shout, I’ll back you up, I’ll vouch for you, I swear on my mother’s grave I will. You don’t have to reek of failure and stink of shame just because in your haste to hop in the front seat and speed off with me in a shiny coupe, you’ve left embassy documents on top of the low brick wall that encloses your ambassador’s patio.

THE EAST WIND II
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​She told me we’d be able to play cribbage and stinkfinger
in the breeze of the warm east wind, that the green light
from Chinese lanterns strung about the porch
would be sufficient for us to see our cards, move our pegs,
and discern the glisten from off our hands, while the smell
of burning macaroni would continue to interlace
with the essence of chalk and perfume, each aroma
defending its own identity throughout the night. I bought
into her vision as soon as I heard it—I fell in line
and tramped the hell along—and I stacked my coins
in front of me more than once in good faith. Even with
a storm that kept dousing the lights, we played till morning
got here, till the gray clouds pulled apart to nothingness,
and my quarters and dimes had fallen off the table
and rolled every which way across the floor.