As embers flaring
amidst midnight shadow,
her baffling freckles flashed
within the black hoodie.
He heard his name called,
his head down, hidden
in his camouflage hoodie—
huddling stubbornly in his
anonymity.
The two figures shouldered their way
through the rain,
black hoods over heads
like monks on pilgrimage
to the drop-off/pick-up point.
The dark depths of the hood
were void of feelings
when hung on the wire hanger
and upon his head.
Their relationship was like a
tight hoodie—
used overmuch, washed overmuch,
and difficult to pull on
for a comfortable fit;
difficult to take off.
For him the hoodie was
his own
hooded headsman—
if worn at night
in a White neighborhood.
His father’s old hoodie
lay upon the floor,
stained and crumpled and empty
of significance.
Homeless and hitchhiking
along the highway
he wondered how life had carried
him so far astray,
like a Greyhound bus
snagging his black hoodie
and dragging him backwards
miles a minute.
How jolly the bulbous belly
beneath the red Santa hoodie—
how menacing the
bearded leer
beneath the hood.
The rainy night hung heavy
upon the clammy earth
like a woolen hoodie
drenched with a cold sweat
as the smoking muzzle
kisses the forehead.
Fall was only half-ready—
a grown man in
swim trunks and beach sandals,
a hoodie reluctantly up top.
The pouch pocket
on the XX-large hoodie
engulfed his small hands
reminding him that the measure
of a man’s size
and size
can be variable.
Ever ironic
and trendy,
the Grim Reaper cloaked his old bones
in a new black hoodie
with understated text that read
“Passing Fad”.
Tangleroot And Tressknot 