My knees crack,
toes crack, fingers crack,
and this old spine sounds like
popcorn microwaving.
My head’s a lead
weight teetering atop it all,
threatening to fall off, body
and mind parting ways.
If this isn’t bad enough,
add the cracking bones of people
I pass on the sidewalk, every
size and shape, and those
jaw bones popping
in restaurants, accompanied
by the clatter of silverware on
restaurant China, and the
bones in stray ally cats,
dogs yanking their aged owners
along cracked sidewalks;
rats raving in the attic.
I’m surrounded by cracking,
clicking and popping sounds, my
bundle of bones simpatico with
their discordant vibrations,
my decrepitude increasing
with age, arthritic joints, and the
slow ticking of grandfather clocks,
real and imaginary.
My son cracks his knuckles,
and I feel it in my bones, in my
aging ancestral bones.
Published 6/12/25
G. O. Clark’s writing has been published in Asimov’s, Analog, Space & Time, Midnight Under The Big Top, Daily SF, HWA Poetry Showcase VII and many other publications over the last 30 years. He’s the author of 16 poetry collections, the most recent, Mindscapes 2024. His third fiction collection, Aliens & Others, came out in 2021 From Hiraeth Publishing. He won the Asimov’s Readers Award for poetry in 2001 & 2024, and was Stoker Award finalist in 2011. He’s retired, and lives in Davis, CA. http://goclarkpoet.weebly.com