Troy Schoultz

Poem For an Amputated Toe

I didn’t intend to miss it,
Useless for balance, unsightly to begin with,
Burst to the size of a poison mushroom from infection
Until the tip to my heel felt swallowed by flame,
And the ulcer fed itself down to the bone.
A toe didn’t seem like much to be sentimental over.
“Cut the son of a bitch off” I muttered
In my best Clint Eastwood deadpan. It wasn’t a put-on.
I’ve learned the art of grit in the past three to four years.
Near death will do that to you. It will make you
Tougher and kinder all at the same time.
But this toe was a part of me, more so than a tooth or spleen.
It was connected to me at birth, a member of my skeletal team.
But damn, I look at the healing void between my big and third toe
And I sense a preview of future loss.
I need to take a page from the playbook of the homeless cats
I help to socialize at the local shelter. Some come in missing an eye,
An ear, in some hard luck cases a paw or leg. They don’t obsess
Over being less than; they relearn stealth,
And the art of the hunt.

Driving Through Riverside Cemetery,
Listening to Tom Petty on the Radio

Labor Day weekend, magenta sun spilling low
Through the twining branches and leaves above grieving angels
And gated mausoleums. I’m tired of making sense of life,
I’m just going to ride it out, try and make
The good choices. Some call that maturity or wisdom.
I call it self-defense. Some stone markers,
Over one hundred years old call out
For me to read eroding names and dates,
Desperate for remembrance. God, life’s such a drag
When you live in the past.

I consider parking the truck and getting out,
But Penny, my pug mix, is with me. She has a lousy habit
Of pissing and shitting at inconvenient times and places.
Dorm rooms at the local college are filling,
I envy the young for everything except student loans.
I too have smoked cigarettes and stared at the moon,
Knew one or two girls who kissed like fire,
But now time means something, and nothing seems real.
If I threw a rock at the lake, would it hit the water like breaking glass?
I sometimes need a few more years to get lucky.

UFOs
Poem for Jim Sullivan
Jim Sullivan was an American singer-songwriter guitarist who released two albums before disappearing without a trace in the deserts of New Mexico in 1975.

There’s been another sighting beyond the county line.
Above jack pines the lights waltz through the night.
Do the owls ponder them? If you believe some folks
They’ll tell you their proof lies in hieroglyphics mingling
With jackal-headed gods
And Vatican commissioned paintings
Of another century. If you believe my great-uncle
He’ll tell you about that flying saucer
Taking up the middle of a backroad as
He was driving home from a second shift at the mill.
But he’s been dead for decades.
Are these travelers forced on reconnaissance missions
Drawing the shortest straw for Earth?
Do they care about us at all? Are they taking applications?
If you ask to be taken, make your request as sincere
As a speculative song about Jesus
Written and played on a guitar left in an old Volkswagen
At the side of a desert road.  It’s entirely possible.
Just ask Jim Sullivan if you can find him,
Still checking out the show with a glassy eye.

Troy Schoultz is a lifelong Wisconsin resident. His poems, stories, and reviews have appeared in Seattle Review, Rattle, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Santa Monica Review, Steel Toe Review, Midwestern Gothic, Palooka and many others in the U.S. and U.K. since 1997. He is the author of two chapbooks and three full-length collections.  He is also an analog collage artist. For more information check out https://troyschoultz.wixsite.com/website