Ways to Reshape the Heart

By P. V. LeForge

This collection represents the apex of LeForge's poetic work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Bay Books
• Release date: Jul 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311111579

P. V. LeForge

P. V. LeForge lives on a horse farm in north Florida with his wife Sara Warner, who is a dressage rider and trainer. Their stable includes Fabayoso, who was Southeastern Regional Stallion Champion, and his colt Freester, who was Reserve Champion USDF Horse of the Year in 2011.LeForge is also an e-book formatter who can be found on Mark's List. He enjoys formatting Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Drama.LeForge's other books of poetry and fiction can be obtained in ebook and paperback at most on-line book outlets. In addition to writing and doing farm chores, he enjoys songwriting and target archery.

Book preview

The End of Things

I was the last kid on my block to get long pants,

a bicycle, a key to the house.

We never locked our doors in those days anyway.

My father said that was because he was a policeman,

but I knew that we had nothing to steal.

I remember sitting down on our porch after school

and telling a buddy that I had forgotten my key

so he couldn't see that we ate off

chipped plates and drank from jelly jars,

or that our television was too old and bulky

for even a thief to want.

Dinner was usually slices of bread and margarine,

bowls of corn flakes, peas from the can.

I remember liking those meals

and searching in the cupboards for more.

In front of the big TV, we laughed merrily

to the only station that came in clearly.

I remember my father poking in the pack

for the last cigarette, searching with his tongue

for that final drop of beer in the bottle.

But our memories sometimes push us in strange directions

and I’ve come to dislike the ass end of things.

This morning, I threw out the last inch of Cheerios in the box

along with a heel of bread and a stub of butter.

I replaced the old green sliver with a fresh bar of soap.

Other things have begun to disturb me too:

the last cup of iced tea in the jug,

the final song on the album, December.

I give my house key to everyone I meet.

Names Our Fathers Called Us

When we were young, we had two names,

one we liked, and one our fathers called us

when they had been drinking, or when

we needed a touch of the fire in their voices.

These were also the names teachers called us

on the first day of school,

before we let them know the truth:

that the names that somehow appeared

on our birth certificates were bogus.

They were the names of conquerors, of presidents

and poets and great healers. They were the names

of movie stars and of relatives who grew up

in another time. They might even have been

the names of saviors, but they weren't ours.

We had our own names; our street names:

Pete, Lefty, or Swerve. And these names gave us

dimes to spend when the Gertrudes

and the Miltons on our block had none.

What we didn't know then was that these

prim and proper young neighbors had nicknames, too;

secret ones.

Bitch, Dummy, Princess, and Sissy Boy,

names that grew wild in a world without streets;

made up by fathers whose own names had been

dragged like shamed children

through credit bureaus and unemployment lines.

I still don't use my formal name,

though it's less a stranger than it once was.

It smiles at me from my driver's license

or my income tax refund

and alerts me to phone solicitors

and high school reunions.

My friend Lefty became Jim after

he was released from double A, and Swerve

finally got married to someone who knows her as Patty.

But I remember how Milton used to correct

our tenth grade teacher who tried to call him Milt,

and how Gertrude always called her husband Daddy.

Allergies

It began when I was born;

they said I was allergic to my mother’s milk

and concocted a safe substitute.

I was allergic to the soap she used;

my clothes, fresh from the washer,

would blotch my skin an itching red

and I spent my growing-up years

sneaking outside in dirty clothes.

I wasn’t allergic to normal stuff:

I loved trees and vines and flowers

and their spring fragrances

let me know what I was