SandScript 2020

Good Deeds
Courtney Hayes Armstrong
I remember my father boasting that he had the IQ of a genius,
smirking
schooling me that people were allowed into Heaven
based on how well they treated their animals
I might have been six
POETRY
And the incessant grass of depressed grey
shag that crawls across his empty apartment in contempt
the only furniture a plastic patio set, mismatched
and one glorious, serious necessity—
a pinball machine
I remember playing with the cherubic boy
whose essence dripped flowery fabric softener
and I linger for hours in the aisle of fruitless detergents
unscrewing countless green plastic lids, sniffing, huffing, desperate to free the hologram
of that nameless babe out into my world for just one sticky second
And the enchantment of the pinball as it shoots like a cannon
from the metal coils of spring, as it smacks plastic and spanks dense flippers
fevered lights and sirens that sing out our only faults,
that we are sweet and young
but to my father, our happiness is too sweet, too young, and much, much too loud
I remember my father’s eyes wet with arcing voltage, throttling,
full-tilt fury
and he grabbed my cat and cast it over scolded railings of ornate pretension
fear paddled the insides of my stomach, bobbed and then retreated
I had blocked my father’s entrance to Heaven
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