Devon Neal | 3 Poems

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Our Mattress

It is a mystery to us how our mattress,
lying swirled with blankets on our bedroom floor,
will, given time, move tectonic to the right,
away from the golden light of the ensuite
and toward the sleek sapphire of the evening window.

It’s not uncommon to hear my name called
from our room, asking again
to help move the bed back into its position,
and then the theories come:
maybe you get into bed too roughly,
maybe you toss and turn more than you think,
maybe it’s the cats as they dart like flashing fish.

Maybe, I say, as I inch its heavy girth
back across the stubble of beige carpet
closer to the bathroom and my nightstand,
and as I leave the room I think maybe
the mattress looks at that darkening window view
the way I look at a quiet cabin clinging to a mountainside.

Scene of the Accident

As rain patters through a thicket of brake lights,
we inch further down the spine of I-65
closer to the diamond police lights
glistening in the downpour.

When I finally reach the scene
where two cars took toothy chunks from each other,
I see on the road and the passenger seat
of a mangled white SUV

the blue and white flash of birthday cake icing
painting the interior of the cab
and spilling out the door, eaten by rain.

Spotted Roadside on Bulk-Item Week

A toilet sleeps on the gray belly button of a naked mattress.
A crooked-mouthed dresser slants, drunk with rain.
Three tires lean together, mourning a friend.
A rust-choked basketball goal is a slumping skeleton.
A baby crib cradles a tree’s lightning limbs.
A sectional couch is a scatter of smoothed-down knuckles.
Wooden pallets are stacked into a clatter of ruined waffles.
Four vacuum cleaners huddle, their feet touching.
Children’s playsets tinker in the wind’s curious hands.

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Devon Neal is a Bardstown, KY resident who received a B.A. in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University and an MBA from The University of the Cumberlands. He currently works as a Human Resources Manager in Louisville, KY. His work has been featured in From the Depths and Rough Cut Press.