Two Poems

The Red-Handled Hatchet

They endure
somehow—

mottled gray
tree stump,

red-handled
hatchet,

sunburnt boy—
blistered.

 

Darts

I tell myself
that the memory
of a half-dozen welling red dots
along my little sister's back
before I was old enough
for kindergarten
is evidence
I've come a long way.

I tell myself that.