Cody Lumpkin
EGGING A HOUSE
There was the clomp
sound when the yolk
splattered on a slat
of vinyl-siding
or the slight reverb
after a shell hit
glass. Once I took
a screen window off
with a brown rotting
egg. I always laughed
after every throw
hit something solid,
the thunk and then
a sound like a rain
shower in the bushes.
But when the flood-
lights of a house
revealed us, we took
to the woods, trash-filled
gullies, or our getaway
cars and made sure
our tires ran over rolled,
rubber-banded newspapers
and stray plastic toys
forgotten in the streets.
The next day, after church,
fresh from worship,
we would drive by
in our Sunday best, to see what
we had done. There would
always be some father blasting
windows with a pressure
washer, one of our classmates
scraping the walls clean
of the message we had left,
a sticky veneer of Saran-wrap
-like whites and snot-green
yolks, cells gone supernova.
Our weekend violence
washed away. A bit of it left
to harden in the sun
to cloudy dots, the forgotten
oozing of a glue gun.
Exclamation points
higher than anyone
could ever reach.
—from Rattle #39, Spring 2013
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