Uncut Maps

By PM Flynn

1. Flowers fall on sparse grass:

spring’s early flowers bud between a mild now 
and a cold winter stalled inside cares. They push 
against the blurred murmurs of glass speculation 
to the patchy dirt around a greenhouse. 

Green azalea leaves shade hidden branches—more flowers 
hiding under the young shade of spring covering each afternoon
of chores; pool hustlers good enough to walk alongside a long row 
of bushes near a street close to TV fame.

2. Uncut thoughts edge through reinforced doors, pool players, 
as the convenience store empties before a small town tournament—
a dollar a game, four quarters in silver then, into the belly
of one of two beefy slate tables; not the pro tables I remember
from high school.

The bowling alley then, the occasional home for sportless teens:

buying cigarettes underage at a chest-high machine for 
thirty-five cents each, a dime more than the drug store; 
the machine next to the back door; forty packs wide, 
as wide as the alley’s entire forty lanes. We nervously 
slot coins to play one or two games of pool. 

3. Outside:

miracles from manufactured fertilizer pads layered under 
threaded roses tracking the length of the plastic house. 
Thick, brushed carpets; worn fibers like red azaleas 
past indifference. 

4. Inside:

a paneled wall separates glossy, maple boards 
and slate tables I bowed to most Saturdays:

the rolling, pounding plastic of all colors constantly popping 
the white pins. With a perfect roll all pins slide, dungeon swept;
like pool balls spun into woven leather string pockets; 
the clicking energy of ivory balls bouncing off the brick walls 
of brief distractions from the abyss around me.

Later, outside light dims. Fluorescent tubes brighten
the Saturday night pool tables; after bowling—each player 
an island of angles like the moon’s reflection of the sun.

PM Flynn is a North Carolina writer. He holds a B.S. in English from East Carolina University, roasts organic coffee and has been published in many fine print and online anthologies, newspapers, and literary magazines. and reviews including Helen Literary Magazine, the Fictional Café, Main Street Rag, The Grassroots Women’s Project, Port Folio Weekly, The Mirror/Slush, Anti-Heroin Chic, 50 Haikus, Fleas on the Dog Online Quarterly, CactiFur, Agape Review, etc.