A graduate of Penn State Altoona with bachelor degrees in English and Criminal Justice, Cameron Conaway is now a graduate student and the Poet-in-Residence at the University of Arizona’s MFA Creative Writing Program. With three fights as a mixed martial artist, he put his love of the fight game on hiatus to pursue a life of writing and a career of teaching.
Reincarnation Revisited
I saw it all.
Aunt Melanie’s tears
when they curved off the inverted
C of her cheek into the earth above
me where weeds grew
from their moisture.
The rose petals placed by Mom
wilting, curling, the rain sending
their juice into my flesh
like the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer
she bought me that Christmas.
The lawnmower cutting the corner
too tight and nicking just below
where my name was carved.
Teenagers juking and jiving
above my body in a game
of midnight flashlight tag.
The centipedes, ants, earthworms
creeping above and below me,
making me feel like the K
in awkward until the birds
picked and poked with their
beaks the A and W
so I could breathe again.
Godzilla, Christmas, and Divorce
The only time I’ll sign the roman numerals after my name is at the bank so he can’t take my money.
Unwrapping him,
I saw the tip of his rubbery
sea green tail poking through the Altoona Mirror -
probably filled with killings or cocaine
or baseball - and my brown eyes
and the motion sensitive
red of his lit up when we saw each other.
I pressed his chiseled body
to my chest - said something about Mothra
or Dad - fiddled with the proper way to plunge
batteries into his ass because I never wanted
him to fail me
or look at me with bloodshot eyes.
I untucked myself, sidled
night after night down the sides
of the steps so they wouldn’t creak,
to place him - and his enemy with a similar
name, Mechagodzilla, - across the silver strip
that separated
our living room and kitchen.
Their prerecorded roars would wake me
in case somebody broke-in
or tried to leave.
