Impact by Bruce Michael Foley

coffin-in-ground

IMPACT

My first wake came
at Saint Catherine’s in the eighth grade.

Kathy Fee was flung head-first through a windshield
they said.

We filed into O’Brien’s, the funeral parlor, just kids
none of us wanting to really be there,
seeing a dead girl of fifteen, laid out in pink silk
and white Irish lace, in a cold metal casket
dressed for a dance.

The place reeked of fresh flowers
making my stomach sick.

Her face was pasted with make-up and powder
and I could see where the deepest scars were,
from shard glass, crevices on her cheeks
filled in with cream
that the undertaker smoothed over, to make her look better.

“It wasn’t blood loss,” I overheard
mother quietly say on the phone,
being a nurse, familiar with trauma and
teenage death.

“It was the impact,” Mom told the caller.

“A broken neck.”

cape-south-2-001Bruce Michael Foley about Bruce Michael Foley. I was born across the bridge from Boston, Massachusetts, in Cambridge, as July 4th fireworks exploded over the Charles River, just a stone’s throw from Harvard University. At age two, my family moved to Somerville, Ma.,where I was raised in a rough blue-collar environment, playing many sports. In 1998 I relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada. Here, I work among special needs children and teach martial arts. Poetry began in high school, but took off in a more dedicated way in later years, along with resuming music studies, guitar. My poems are published in various anthologies; including Impressions, Prism, and the Mighty Voices Of Thunder Series, sponsored by the international poetry website, “Allpoetry.” I was a featured poet in Lyrical Somerville February 2015, a Boston based publication, as well as being an “Editor’s Front Page Pick,” for the month of March 2016 on Allpoetry. A defining moment that contributed significantly to further interest in writing was a First Place Award from the International Poetry Fellowship, for my poem, “Among Fields of Cotton.” Presently, I am happy to have the opportunity to explore various forms of poetry with Mr. Bruce Isaacson, Poet Laureate of Clark County Nevada.

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