for Akiho
Well beyond the reach of clocks, you
learned the hour of your abandonment
had long since settled, that those specters
referred to as your kin, if only through the
recurrent clenching of your jaw, cashed in the
return end of your ticket and left you on the bench
alone, a grubby paperback the sole survivor
of the bill they pushed at you to pay, cueing
in the juke box of your mind the bland refrain
from a country tune you sang in Waco –
that blood for sure is thicker than water,
just the weight to help you drown.
James Fleet Underwood writes poems rooted in memory, loss, and working-class life. Raised in the rural Midwest, he explores emotional clarity through personal landscapes shaped by distance, grief, and survival.
