Brian Beatty- Poetry

Three excerpts from Brazil, Indiana (a folk poem)

by Brian Beatty

My granddad, the year of the coal miners’ strike,

paced the garage until he was out of cigarettes.

After that, bored, he buried his truck to its axles 

in my grandmother’s flower garden by the road, 

where he sat with his dirty white knuckles choking 

the Chevy steering wheel blue. 

He didn’t bring the heart slowly, quietly killing him 

inside until sunset.

****

Granddad’s jewel-hued work shirts

weighed down cold wire hangers in the closet in the garage

until I grew into and inherited whatever I wanted.

Nobody else in my junior high had their own 

low-hanging cloud of coal dust, diesel fumes and dry rot

following them through the cruel, crowded halls between bells.

Not even the secret smokers barking up lungs 

out in the alley behind the school 

in that old local tradition.

****

Antenna TV static blasted down sideways

from the sky burying the farmhouse

well past its windows and doors

trapping the grandparents and the boy 

inside a cold quiet for days. 

The blizzard miracle of 1977

was how they survived

eating Milky Way candy bars.

****

Other excerpts from Brazil, Indiana (a folk poem) have appeared in or are forthcoming from Alba, Clementine Poetry Journal, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, Glasgow Review of Books, Midwestern Gothic, The Moth, Poetry City USA, Right Hand Pointing and Yellow Chair Review.

Brian Beatty’s jokes, poems and short stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The Bark, The Chattahoochee Review, The Cimarron Review, Conduit, Dark Mountain, elimae, The Evergreen Review, The Good Men Project, Gulf Coast, Hobart, Juked, McSweeney’s, Opium, Paper Darts, The Quarterly, Revolver, RHINO, Seventeen, The Southern Poetry Review, Sulphur River Literary Review and Sycamore Review. His writing has also been featured in public art projects and on public radio.