Buzzards

by Tom Barlow

In our '25 Chevy Malibu, plastic still on the mats
Salem-bound— your old man's birthday,

back seat stuffed with American flag balloons.
We seem to have a way, you say,

of replacing candor with tchotchkes.
I point out that your dad's going to be

seventy-nine, and we barely found room
back there for fifty balloons, never mind a brawl.

You read me the car manual rather than
admit you no longer care for the man

your father's become–obsessed with
the snake-whip of war, race, and money,

but these days we handle shame
like a grease fire and a water bucket.

On the way, the cake slides across the floor
until the icing smears along the sides of the box.

You try to convince your dad the resulting mess
will eat the same, but he throws it in the trash,

giving us no opportunity to sing to him before
he turns on the Red Sox game, as if

the players were his blood relatives.
We take turns in the kitchen, popping balloons

until the floor is littered with the dead.

Tom Barlow is an American writer of novels, short stories and poetry whose work has appeared in many journals including Trampoline, Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, Hobart, Tenemos, Redivider, The North Dakota Quarterly, The New York Quarterly, The Modern Poetry Quarterly. See tombarlowauthor.com.