Another Cowboy Picture
In Introduction to Painting II,
we had an opportunity
to paint anything we wanted.
So there I was,
dressed like a post-impressionist
cowboy, cubism, a la Van Gogh,
kneeling before a great tower.
Yellow and white beams streaked
piercing the clouds and dragging
them down towards me, soft steps
to avoid the half-gray meadows
and cycling hills, adventure,
vicissitudes of daylight reality.
As I kneeled, pending decisions
at the brink of the gloaming,
I submitted myself for a grade,
which was a C plus.
There is an old photo of me,
about six, in a corn-colored Woody onesie,
that cheap, stretchy costume fabric,
but despite the brown foam cattleman,
my black boots were authentic,
pounding my heels into the wood floor
and sending earthquakes to the basement,
establishing myself as the new sheriff
of my mom and dad’s house.
If it were not for the photograph,
I think each passing day would disappear
and then how lonely to just be me
carting home my bad painting
without a little twang in my soles.
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Roomba
When we’re fighting about
what I wrote in my journal
about a girl I saw,
I still have to wash, dry, and fold
my wife’s clothes
because we are married,
and I love to be married,
to touch her leggings and
age-soiled underwear,
because I am sorry,
and as I watch the Roomba
bump and clean
I commiserate.
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Bryce Johle’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Parentheses Journal, Eunoia Review, October Hill Magazine, Maudlin House, and Pennsylvania Bard’s Western PA Poetry Anthology 2023, among others. His chapbook, Airplane Graveyard, will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife and stepdaughter.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 