Josiah Bancroft // Poetry

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The Ballad of Home Grown

The sunflowers were torched by Home Grown
after his mother died, sort of out of the blue,
and he chose to fishtail home from the plot

and smoke since he was alone, the smoke like

an open umbrella in the cab, and not tobacco.

So he was high and sad when he saw the crop,

with their big fat baby faces shyly scrutinizing

the moonlit ground. He thought what a nice tribute

it would make to suck half a gallon of gasoline

through a leg’s-length of rubber tubing, swallow

a little, fill up a beer bottle with the rest, and fuse

the Molotov cocktail with his wadded black necktie.

The burning field smelled like toast, and the deer

that bounded out with its coat glowing, careened

into the side of his truck and broke the mirror clear,

cratering the door. Home Grown grabbed after

the doe, clapped her smoldering shoulders between

his big mitt hands, but she hopped up, her stalks

criss-crossing under, and leapt again into the furnace

like dumb coal. He prepared a rescue, decided

to drive his truck into the blazing poles and lanterns,

went so far as to imagine the fired heads bouncing

off the windscreen, as if he’d been shot through

the moment of creation, when she reemerged,

a guttering comet. He wailed as she rushed up

the road and neither shrunk nor quit, but remained

full as the sun resting on the meager shelf of the earth.

The family had called Home Grown a full blown drunk

because he was drunk at the funeral and broke up

the calm lapping of the Psalm with a choked

“Mama” like some blinking, jointless plastic doll,

and like a plastic doll he kept rocking and saying

“Mama” and some kids started snickering so bad

they had to be slapped. By morning, the field is full

of enormous spent matches, like ranks of stagehands,

all pretending to be the background, when of course

they’re the show we all came to see. The kids love picking

the scorched seeds out of the black faces, and storing

them up in their cheeks. They say they taste good

for what they are. The family lets them graze away until

they find the fawn in the charred middle, balled up and

dug in, stubbornly pretending to have slept its whole life.

Josiah Bancroft’s work has appeared in Passages North, ReDivider, The Roanoke Review, The Hollins Critic, New South, and Makeout Creek,among others. He currently resides in Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay.

Date of Publication: 01 May 2008