Keith Gorman is a retired factory worker, poet, and classical guitarist residing in Eastern Tennessee near the foothills of The Great Smoky Mountains.  He received his BM degree from The Sherwood Conservatory of Music in Chicago, Illinois. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in various journals, including Verse-Virtual, Delta Poetry Review, I-70 Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Chiron Review, and The California Quarterly Review.

Shaving Dad

The young CNAs work meticulously to move
my father from the gurney, dress him and place him
upright in a flat-seated chair where I am now 
buzzing circles with a Norelco razor against 
the loose skin of his right cheek, trimming 
away the three-day gray stubble 

and thinking about the missteps, 
the miscalculations, the snap of the waist belt 
zipping through the pant loops, the wide-eyed 
shock of my classmates watching me as I limped 
nude to the shower after gym class, asking me,
what happened? and pointing to the purple stripes.

I’m trimming that curve of the chin now that looks
a lot like my own, reconstructing the scene 
of that godawful day at the dining table: 
I don’t think he’s bright enough to go to college! 
Mom’s mouth parked open, stunned at the barefaced
cruelty and stupidity. And I,

a young man—a strong man—sitting there, pushing 
my food with a fork, sorry now that I never flipped 
the table, never beat you down the way that you 
beat Ringo, my dog. I could’ve squashed you like 
a mealybug that day, this helpless leaf of a man 
sitting before me now with trembling hands.  

Lines for John Denver

I never liked his formulaic songs, his perfect 
pitch, that cheeky smile, his craps game style of cherry-
picking words. All the signs of a sightseer’s claim
to having scaled The Matterhorn.
 
But—God—he was hot with his catchy tunes
blowing up the FM dial, rousing teens to hit the trail
in search of freedoms that only flannel shirts could find  
and cheap guitars could emulate. Forward now
 
to ninety-eight, a year beyond that troubled day
John crashed a plane near Monterey, his body
ripped and torn. A searcher finds the lower
jaw, the bone that bore the twelve gold and four
 
platinum discs. The song I now so clearly hear, playing 
afar on the factory floor, where an automated transport car 
is moving freight to the phosphate line. And the boys? 
Well, they’re watching clocks, building kingdoms 

with their calloused hands. And John is there, trapped 
inside the robot car, singing a loop that never ends, like 
fading chimes of an ice cream truck, glory bound on a
boondock road, somewhere in West Virginia.

The Great Blue Heron

On this cool evening around Springbrook Pond,
the katydids call from a spindly thicket  
that borders the footbridge, where I stand alone
at the exact location where my ex and I split,

watching the Great Blue Heron, her daggered
bill dipping calmly into the slow-moving
waters at the mouth of the culvert, where she
soon retrieves a shimmering minnow. And I watch 

as it disappears via the tiny vibrations in her throat,
the acids in her stomach working to soften
the bones, making them easy to digest and less
likely to puncture her stomach or cause pain  

during the elimination process. A Blue Heron is
estimated to consume up to two pounds
of aquatic lifeforms in a single day’s quest.  
It's funny how things vanish this way.