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Amanda Russell
It’s July in Texas Time
27 days after his 9th birthday he said Is it right that I have 9,424 memories? You have nearly a decade of memories, I say. And 2 minutes later, he passes me, Properly, 9,425 memories. We were sweating in the checkout line at Goodwill. He paced while I held our place in line, leaned on our attempts to replace things we left behind- the bookshelves and bedside tables plucked from FREE signs that sprouted wild along the curbsides of our old town.
transplanted to home
sun hammer
trumpet vine fence line
Today he sits out of all 107 of the actual degrees, knees on the fake wood floor, mind in 348BC. He’s learning about water clocks while I print documents. Official forms for car registration. Instructions for the forms for the car registration. Between printer jams, Put these gloves on me, she says. She must have wrestled herself into the blue princess dress she’s wearing, but the gloves are all together another animal- shiny satin with glitter embellishment. She looks like Queen Elsa from Disney’s Frozen.
time crushes kiddos
heel tock toe
steel-stemmed stilettos
About the writer:
Amanda Russell is an editor at The Comstock Review and a stay-at-home mom. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Walt’s Corner, EcoTheo Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and the anthology mightier: poets for social justice. Her chapbook Barren Years is available now.
Image: The Fourteenth of July by Roger de La Fresnaye (1885-1925). Oil on canvas. 28 1/4 × 38 1/4 inches. 1914. Public domain.
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