Cody Lumpkin

EGGING A HOUSE

There was the clomp
sound when the yolk

splattered on a slat
of vinyl-siding

or the slight reverb
after a shell hit

glass. Once I took
a screen window off

with a brown rotting
egg. I always laughed

after every throw
hit something solid,

the thunk and then
a sound like a rain

shower in the bushes.
But when the flood-

lights of a house
revealed us, we took

to the woods, trash-filled
gullies, or our getaway

cars and made sure
our tires ran over rolled,

rubber-banded newspapers
and stray plastic toys

forgotten in the streets.
The next day, after church,

fresh from worship,
we would drive by

in our Sunday best, to see what
we had done. There would

always be some father blasting
windows with a pressure

washer, one of our classmates
scraping the walls clean

of the message we had left,
a sticky veneer of Saran-wrap

-like whites and snot-green
yolks, cells gone supernova.

Our weekend violence
washed away. A bit of it left

to harden in the sun
to cloudy dots, the forgotten

oozing of a glue gun.
Exclamation points

higher than anyone
could ever reach.

—from Rattle #39, Spring 2013
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