Gerald McCarthy - Poetry

Monday Jun 01

Issue VI, Volume X : July 2019

Gerald McCarthy’s newest book of poems is Trouble Light (West End Press/University of New Mexico Press, 2008). New poems appear in River Oak Review, War, Literature & the Arts, Third Wednesday, Silk Road, and The Broome Review.

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Curb Runner

I was born with one leg

shorter than the other,

and I learned to ride the curbs

swinging my good leg

outward like a wing.

Step and a half

they tagged me—

I’d look up to see them

standing around

across from the high school

downtown, near

Marino’s lunch place

where the sign said—

they also serve

who only stand and wait—

and below that: Be still and know.

I know I wanted to skirt

the crowd, the laughs—

hey stepper, whatcha doin’ there?

No use trying to escape

what you can’t change,

whirling away from their stares—

my good heel hitting hard

against the asphalt.