poet and fiction writer
Ken Farrell
Select Print Publications
Erection
He always felt unlike at home, somehow outside
the family: Mary’s hushed insistence that he was special
was better left unsaid: the way Joseph stared
and never raised a hand to correct him,
rarely raised a hand to caress him:
the whispers when he left the room.
But beyond the chalky walls he went unnoticed
running along dusty cart-paths
cavorting with other eleven-year-olds (but not exactly)
teasing the club-footed goat herder
tingling with guilt (but not really)
and throwing stones and throwing stones
into gaping wells and windows
and liking it.
Eventually the fields and village bore down,
pushed him aside, deeper out of the crowd.
He began to leave his sandals home
liking the gritty ground needling his feet.
He began to wear his robes low-hung ‘round his waist,
the sun thrill-lashing his flesh, scarleting his skin
to match his mood. He began to watch the other boys
as they ran, sprite like deer
as they snatched a fig off a wooden cart
pitching it forth and back
as the merchant scrambled after
and he saw himself apart, a tremble rising,
a tremor coaxing up his spine.
He was different; the tension seeped
and what comfort as but he held himself
and he grew in a way
he would never be able to tell.
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First appeared in Texas Poetry Journal Spring 2005
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Deerstalker
When my son visits—
most every third holiday and odd summers—we spend time like guys in the barn rooting through bric-a-brac of lives gone by; one summer we find a many-dinged Louisville Slugger pyrographed, “To Arnie.” I wonder who was Arnie who loved this bat so well? Why didn't he take his gift with him? Surely they play baseball there. Like Arnie, my son knows what bats are for: he swats a plum-sized stone into the unending trees.
This summer, we explore
an unreal world, the pond-side wood full of ghosts: hidden eyes
glint, less than animal, more than human, knowing. Perhaps Arnie himself reverberates the shadows, echoing our laughter: we are more watched than watchers, more seen than seers. We scavenge hours upon days at the pond, seeking life unlike our own, flipping rocks in search of snakes, fishing for life strangely brewed with rough-and-ready tree-limb rods. His mother hates snakes and always passed on fishing; we have lots of fun.
On our last afternoon
before his return, we sit against
a twinning tree at the edge
of the water, fishing. A lopsided
toad plunges from the muddy bank and my son makes an electric connection, asking do cats always really land on their feet? My thought flutters: his mother has a cat, but that would
be that, so instead I reply, often yes. It’s because of kinesthetic
awareness. I explain: so like a cat pondering a mouse, he mulls
his new-found fact, bats it around, wringing pleasure from every tremble.
He casts and reels, his
internal dynamo spins, the blue arc leaps: Dad, why don’t I live with you? A shudder, my hesitation: for the first time I wish this young Sherlock wasn’t quite so deft. For all our closeness, he’s grown out of this place and into a realm of fading light. Only the ether of questions
links us, and each year my
answers come harder, but strained as they may be,
they are the lone gift a man
thrown naked to the world
can offer. He asks, Don’t you
want me to stay? I fumble for
analogy, stuttering your mother
and I are built differently…
I point after the two just-
caught perch tethered and writhing on the bank, and glaze-eyed, I agonizingly explain tolerance for pain.
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First appeared in Pilgrimage 42.2, 2019
Contact
I dream I talk to the Sun-Maid raisin girl
(whom I love) about dreams where I am
​
a crisping leaf like a curling hand
closing around an ant
she blushes and says hazards
may exist that are not marked
I wrap her with myself
we sublimate and swirl
we are green in the youth
of undying trees
we shine!
we build rainbows
pixel by pixel
we take a year of grapes
stamp them into wine
we hoist inebriate sails
and cloud into the sky
we twirl and dance
in shallow siroccos
we look to the west
out of the west
comes
a
cold
wind
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First appeared in Writer's Bloc Spring 2002
Goblin Fever
​
Sometimes he sleeps
with lights on. The floors creak
and he hunkers under stiff sheets.
Panes rattle in frames
and he cranes for the three-toed
thud-and-shuffle of goblin feet,
Kabar in hand,
motley blades shivering
in unsnapped sheathes.
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First appeared in Writer's Bloc Spring 2002
Echo
When it thunders I pretend to be
asleep-- I imagine
I look in on myself
reach up in the doorway
and stroke my cheek
with the shadow of my hand
Sometimes I pretend to dream--
like black beams
from a hollow star
singing across the night
visions of a mother searching
for a dead soldier in begonias
who grows always younger
radiate out the window
and descend into space
while in the sky
on a distant world
a storm rages
Under that plum-ash sky
a child searches for our star
hopeful utters a prayer
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First appeared in Connections 2002
