Toenail
A volunteer on homeless services day,
I had anticipated washing feet, but drew toenails.
When the first man stepped forward,
I knew the end before the beginning.
I would need to deploy the guillotine clippers
to chop his toenails, clipping such wooden
and infected things not an option.
This one will bleed, I told him, wiggling
the big toe like in a children’s rhyme,
and you won’t know it, but at night
when you remove your socks you’ll see
the flat red and know that you’ve bled.
He hmphed. “I sleep in my socks.
Take off my socks when the sun comes up.”
I chopped four times each nail, splinters
flying past like shrapnel in his war to survive,
then scraped an emery board on the jagged edges.
“Now I can go downhill,” he said,
“the big toe’s been carving up my tennies
like a hatchet on a chicken’s neck,” he said.
“No joke.”
• • •
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California. He has a new poetry collection, The Root Endures, from Sheila-Na-Gig, and two chapbooks. This is his third appearance in BoomerLitMag. More can be found at http://www.jeff-burt.com.