Kenneth Pobo, Summer 2016

Wandawoowoo Wheezing
Kenneth Pobo

At parties Aunt Carla
was like a tea kettle
that someone forgot to turn off,
a whistle wheeze seizing
the couch.  Usually I kept quiet.
Silence, a swing that I made
go higher and higher until
my feet kicked low-flying clouds.
One Christmas

I overheard Aunt Carla
tell my two other aunts
that I was dumb as turnip.  True,
school felt like a shoe mom kept
trying to fit me into.  All
I felt was the pinch.  Mistakes
make me.  Aunt Carla never
admitted to any.  Relieved

when she died,
I avoided her funeral,
which I regret now
that I sound like the kettle,
wheezing, my nephews
running away.

Kenneth Pobo had a new book out in 2015 from Urban Farmhouse Press called Booking Rooms in the Kuiper Belt.  His work has appeared in: West Branch, Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, Philadelphia Stories, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.