Tom C. Hunley

January 28, 2022

“If You’ve Met One Autistic Person, You’ve Met One Autistic Person” by Tom C. HunleyPosted by

Tom C. Hunley

IF YOU’VE MET ONE AUTISTIC PERSON, YOU’VE MET ONE AUTISTIC PERSON

—popular saying within the ASD support community

My son’s the only person that I know
who thinks this way, who acts this way.
The boy eats three potatoes every day.
He says he wants to gain weight, wants to grow

his waist. To keep from melting down, he’ll throw
ice cubes across our yard. A game. Who plays?
My son’s the only person. That I know.
Who thinks this way? Who acts this way?

Who asks how much you weigh? How fast you’ll grow?
Who says whatever their heart says to say?
Don’t let him bend to suit the world, I pray.
Who dreams up paths where no one else can go?
My son’s the only person that I know.

—from Rattle #74, Winter 2021

__________

Tom C. Hunley: “Most of the poems in Adjusting to the Lights are about my son Evan. I’m grateful to Rattle for including it in their chapbook series, and I’m grateful to the 100+ readers who sent me kind notes about the poems, but I feel like I need to make a disclaimer. I don’t deserve full credit for writing those poems. The way Evan’s mind works, the way he approaches life—it’s fully formed surrealist poetry happening right in front of my eyes. All I had to do was jot down what was happening right in front of me. This particular poem, in case you’re wondering, is a rondel, one of the many wonderful forms that, aside from crepes and the Statue of Liberty, are France’s greatest gifts to us.” (web)

Rattle Logo

February 4, 2021

“Pets” by Tom C. HunleyPosted by

Tom C. Hunley

PETS

I tell my wife I dreamed we got a dog.
A big dog, big responsibility.
Apartments wouldn’t let us move in with
the dog, and hotels wouldn’t let us stay.
The dog made giant messes, tore apart
our furniture. Now what was that about?
You dreamed about our daughter, my wife said.
I don’t know why I hadn’t seen that. When
we got her, she’d already grown, but now
she’s not just some big dog, she’s Marmaduke
or Clifford knocking our fence over with
a sneeze and making massive messes, piles
of poop, then showing us those puppy eyes,
and sure, the foster system’s like the pound:
the lucky ones get homes. The rest, at age
eighteen, might just as well be put to sleep.

Another time, my wife complained that our
cat, Sarah, lies around the house and frowns
at vittles that we set in front of her,
and Sarah scratched my wife because she’d tried
to give her Kitty Prozac that the vet
prescribed, then settled in my wife’s lap like
those claws had not just dug into her neck.
(We bought the cat for our autistic son
who feeds her, loves her, tries to pet her, but
she hides beneath our bed until he leaves.)
Aha! I said. You say our cat just naps
all day, lies with her head in your lap while
you stroke her, then resists attempts to make
her healthy, happy? Darling, don’t you see?
The ready claws? The landing on all fours
despite a fall that most could not survive?

—from Adjusting to the Lights
2020 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

__________

Tom C. Hunley: “I started writing poetry at age eighteen after reading ‘In the Desert’ by Stephen Crane. I have now devoted more than 30 years to a study of the delicious bitterness of my heart.” (web)

Rattle Logo

January 14, 2021

“Crashing” by Tom C. HunleyPosted by

Tom C. Hunley

CRASHING

“Crashes are preventable. Accidents are not.”
—State Traffic School Instructor

During Hurricane Mo I eyed the sand
thinking I’d find sea shells and sand dollars there
once the sea stopped churning. Thinking I could
collect them for my daughter. Then I remembered
she was in the water and couldn’t swim.
That when I waded in after her, she pushed
me away, said she loved Hurricane Mo.
Then I remembered: Mo is her boyfriend.
Wanted by cops. Wanted by my daughter.

Then I realized I’d finally fallen asleep,
that this was a dream about my daughter
and her coked-out boyfriend. So I drove home.
It got so dark I couldn’t see. I felt a crash,
heard a siren.
Then I realized I was still
asleep, dreaming about my daughter,
about the creep who squeezes through
our doggy door to tiptoe into her room,
and about traffic school, which I had
to attend this morning because I ran a red light.

Writing this poem during traffic school, pretending
to take notes, I realize my wife and I
are the red lights our daughter cruises through,
that she’s still learning to navigate these roads,
that there’s a Mo at every intersection, gearing up
to hit on her, hit her head-on,
that poems are seashells carried to us by the tides,
that it takes more than waking up
to make a nightmare end.

—from Adjusting to the Lights
2020 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

__________

Tom C. Hunley: “I started writing poetry at age eighteen after reading ‘In the Desert’ by Stephen Crane. I have now devoted more than 30 years to a study of the delicious bitterness of my heart.” (web)

Rattle Logo

December 3, 2020

“I Never Pushed My Daughter” by Tom C. HunleyPosted by

Tom C. Hunley

I NEVER PUSHED MY DAUGHTER

in a stroller through the park.
I never got lost in a trance
as the trees seemed to listen as she

tried out sounds in hopes
of inventing words

for the warm feeling
of a full belly, a pink blanket

and for the first time
a song rocking her

to sleep. Instead I read
an online profile that said

she loved pets and purple
and singing and acting and
had hurts that I would have

to enter, scars like ravenous
mouths I couldn’t escape

if I got close to her like
entering a haunted house
with ghosts in it who

don’t mind being dead but
want me to feel what they felt.

I never held her on my shoulders
up to the monkey bars
giggling, faux afraid of falling.

No, I got her after fire
got her, burned everything
she knew. I could see it

in her eyes. I felt like paper,
like if I touched her it would
torch me, but I told her

this would go away and come back
like traces of lightning bugs
growing fainter and more distant.

I watched Instant Family with her
over and over but only after

she had lived through scenes
she wasn’t old enough
to see in movies.

I never tossed her
into the air, laughing,
sure I’d catch her

and if we played tag
a rolling boulder was it
and it wanted to flatten us

and if we played
hide-and-go-seek
we each hid in the darkness

inside of ourselves, neither
of us sure we’d ever
find our way out.

—from Adjusting to the Lights
2020 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

__________

Tom C. Hunley: “I started writing poetry at age eighteen after reading ‘In the Desert’ by Stephen Crane. I have now devoted more than 30 years to a study of the delicious bitterness of my heart.” (web)

Rattle Logo

August 14, 2020

“The Fact That There’s a Snake Tunneling Through My Grass Doesn’t Make the Parting of the Blades Any Less Beautiful” by Tom C. HunleyPosted by

Tom C. Hunley

THE FACT THAT THERE’S A SNAKE TUNNELING THROUGH MY GRASS DOESN’T MAKE THE PARTING OF THE BLADES ANY LESS BEAUTIFUL

Many things are strange. 
For example, people yawn 
when other people yawn
but usually blush or look away 
when other people cry.
All the heavy metal potheads
from high school became bankers
or lawyers or, in some cases,
well-heeled preachers.
Meanwhile, David Lee Roth,
formerly of Van Halen, 
could show up at your door
to set up your DISH TV satellite,
and you wouldn’t even recognize him,
now would you? Or you’d recognize him,
but you’d yawn, and he’d yawn
to hide the fact that he’s crying inside.
Might as well jump
like a fish that shocks the air
and is shocked by it
before diving home
to its pond stained by sunrise
as sunlight skims the surface.
Me, I’ve seen barbed wire rusting
in brittle morning light.
I’ve felt a horse’s nose
wet under my hand
and heard its snort, like wind flapping a flag.
Honest, I’ve heard a stadium exhale
as a ball landed in a glove, and I’ve spent
the car ride home trying to find
a way to describe that sound.
I’ve felt sorrow in the heart
of beauty and beauty inside sorrow.
Beauty and sorrow have rubbed together
like two sticks, blazed up, and burned me.
Speaking of the smoke signals
made by beauty and sorrow 
talking over each other, I’ve heard people
laugh when other people laugh
but it would be a lie to say 
I’ve never heard anyone laugh
as someone else cried. I need you
to think of poetry as a beautiful lie that hits
a bullseye. I’ve gazed into a bull’s eye,
seen the fierce, wounded beauty there. 
I need you to know that the sky’s
tilting from the heaviness 
of all these southbound birds
but will right itself before you 
have a chance to fact-check me on this.

—from Rattle #68, Summer 2020

__________

Tom C. Hunley: “I started writing poetry at age eighteen after reading ‘In the Desert’ by Stephen Crane. I have now devoted more than 30 years to a study of the delicious bitterness of my heart.” (web)

Rattle Logo

July 28, 2019

“No One Who Knew Will Called Him Willem” by Tom C. HunleyPosted by

Tom C. Hunley

NO ONE WHO KNEW WILL CALLED HIM WILLEM

Each of us is a lot more than one thing
that we do or a few choices that we make.

I remember Will as a kind, gentle person.
Will offered me a place to stay when he learned
I was couch-hopping for a month.
Will and Don were the only friends to show up
for a 1991 poetry contest I was in
at Washington Trade and Convention Center.
Will and I were the only ones to show up for the surprise
birthday party that Don’s girlfriend held for Don.
That’s the Will I knew. Not weak Will
hiding behind a mask, trying to light a propane tank.

I remember Will’s song, “I’m lazy,” featuring the lyric
“My friends should know not to call before noon
because I’m lazy,” sung-spoken in a voice like Lou Reed’s.
Will helped look after Bob, my friend from work
and Will’s former housemate, after Bob got drunk,
set fire to his house, offered the firemen beers.
Will and his girlfriend came to a party I held to celebrate
three years sober. She was blonde and half his age.
My housemate, Julia, said, “Will’s forty, but he’s a boy.”
That’s the Will I knew. Not ill Will
hiding a baton and a knife in his pants.

I read the first news article, which didn’t mention his name,
and the comments: “I only wish the white pos
miscreant antifa thug could have been gunned down
in broad daylight in front of his kids,” etc.
Then Don texted me, “Will’s dead. I love you, Tom,”
and forwarded the second article, which called him Willem
Van Spronsen, along with the comments:
“Where will they bury his body?
I’d like to take a shit on his grave,” etc.
Some part of my world shattered like someone
threw a rock at a stained glass window and made
a hole where the lamb’s head had been.

Apparently Will’s wife had left him, taken their child,
and this was a fruit too bitter for him to eat,
a lemon that oozed juice into the cuts in his hands.
“I have a father’s broken heart,” he wrote in a suicide letter/manifesto.
“I’m a head in the clouds dreamer. I believe in love and redemption.”
Me too, Will. I will always dream. I will always believe.
I dream you were a scarecrow and not a flaming torch.
I believe you were the propane tank and not the explosive device.

—from Poets Respond
July 28, 2019

__________

Tom C. Hunley: “It’s difficult to get the poem from news, yet people die miserably every day. This one’s been hard to write. Hearing an old friend’s name in the mouths of talking heads was surreal and unnerving. Knowing that there was a lot more to the story than journalists could tell has made me think of all news stories in new ways. I’ve never been a fan of Antifa (understatement), and seeing how twisted this sweet man became under their influence makes me dislike the organization even more. It makes me think I can understand how the friends and family of Charlie Manson’s cult followers must have felt. At the same time, I now see that there’s a face behind each of those masks, a human being who likely has a kind heart and a confused mind, as Will did.” (web)

Rattle Logo

June 7, 2017

“I Lie on a Hammock Imagining a Ten Count” by Tom C. HunleyPosted by

Tom C. Hunley

I LIE ON A HAMMOCK IMAGINING A TEN COUNT

Here lies Tom C. Hunley
on his hammock
swinging between two oaks
between a bird singing
and shocks of silence
between the danger of a stinger
and the yellow whirl of a butterfly
between his shadow sprawled out
on his long-neglected lawn
and the evening sky bruised
like the eye of a boxer knocked down
and fighting his way back up
who upon rising sees his body
still sprawled on the canvas
looking so serene he forgives himself
finally for not being a champion
for letting his father flatten his mother
over and over until he found the combination
that unlocked his fury and cold-cocked his father
and who gazing somehow into his own
dazed eyes sees that there’s more
to a person than he could ever fit
in his fists more than he could hold
clenched in his muscled oiled arms
more beauty than you can bottle
in something as soft and lightweight
as a body

—from Rattle #55, Spring 2017

__________

Tom C. Hunley: “When I was a teenager, I was captivated by Kevin J. O’Connor’s portrayal of a teenage beat poet in Peggy Sue Got Married. Shortly thereafter, I picked up Allen Ginsberg’s Empty Mirror and read ‘I am flesh and blood, but my mind is the focus of much lightning.’ I felt that way about myself. Every decision I’ve made since then has been impacted by my desire to hang onto that feeling.” (web)

 

Dorianne Laux is the guest on episode #44 of the Rattlecast. Click here to watch!

Tom C. Hunley is the guest on episode #49 of the Rattlecast. Click here to watch!

Rattle Logo