Dodo Eraser

we used to paint houses

in the summer. Siblings saving 
for various vices. Skateboards
steering us toward split shins.
Nintendo games, blown on 
like Ornette and his furious sax.
Jobs paid in cash, washed out 
bills balled up like the swirling 
gases of newly formed worlds. 
Secret nights buzzed with heat. 
Time passing like sound waves. 
When my brother died, alone,
I thought of that summer. 
Those homes with their new 
skin, the sun already beginning 
to forge so many fresh cracks.

the cowardly lion after dorothy

Soon as She left I got new stationery. Simply – “The Lion.”
Used good card stock, luminous as Her audacious shoes. 

Knowing this alone wouldn’t salve my soft stature, I puffed 
up my indomitable curls, gold like ancient coins. Roared

so loud you could taste smoked thunder. Citizens of Oz, bite-
sized minions cloaked in clover, don’t love me like they treasure

their precious Scarecrow. Phony fistfuls of brain stuffed under 
pounds of baked hay. Or that Tin Man! Phallic axe and crude hunger 

for oil. No one questions if his ticker is true. If that sound like God                      
throwing dice ‘round his alloy chest is actual rippling flesh. 

How to manifest bravery? Again. How to articulate courage? Again. 
Without suffering a broken bone or a broken brain or a broken heart? 

I’d have to ravage the whole damn town, fearless lion 
teeth slashing away at all that emerald skin.

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Ben Starr studied poetry in college and as part of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Dishsoap Quarterly, Maudlin House, Gone Lawn, Club Plum and other journals. Find more of his work on X @benjaminstarr and at benstarrwrites.com