Jennifer Brooks Poet Free verse

Tommy's Patch

(Aids memorial quilt, February 2005) 

I. 
As a native girl too, 
grapefruit tanned, knew the secret 
to Florida oranges. 
That the sweetest nectar, 
broken open 
piece by piece, 
points naturally toward the 
thumb tip,  dips delicately 
across the taste buds. 
I am sure 
Tommy held them this way 
many times, 
far away from the dull blue 
surrounded Florida 
painted on his cloth tombstone. 

II. 
The heart of Texas was Bill. 
Not the plastered crumbled clay 
of the Alamo, 
where the dead still wandered 
aimlessly, gaunt faced, austere and unknowing 
of their long abandonment. 

I wondered 
if Bill liked ten gallon hats. 
If Tommy would scold him every time he put one 
on before planting 
light bird nest hands on his shoulders 
and pulling tight 
with pressed lips, 
telling Bill to remember Tommy, not the Alamo, 
so his apparitions can stalk at daylight 
with green tea and an orange on the thumb 
unabandoned in the heart of Texas.

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