Otis
Charlie Brice
Otis was a tiny turtle, a pet I placed in a glass bowl with
water, earth, and a rock for him to rest upon. Like the church,
Otis needed a rock.
I sprinkled pet-shop flakes into his glass home. I never knew
what type of food those flakes were, but they smelled horrible,
especially when Otis
knocked them into the water in his slow, deliberate way. After
those flakes soaked for a couple of days, the tank smelled like
my dad’s breath after a night
of bourbon and bawdry followed by morning Clorets, his tongue
celadon as he sipped black coffee, the mug held with trembling hands.
The Church was my rock,
a place I could rest. God could see me as if the cathedral in Cheyenne
was made of glass. My prayers were so selfish: Please stop my dad’s
drinking, my mother’s screaming,
and keep Otis alive and happy. One morning when my dad hadn’t
returned home from a drunken night, I went to feed Otis. His shell was
bloody. He lay moribund on his rock,
his head motionless outside his shell. I placed him inside a lovely
smelling cedar box with a crucifix on its lid. I got him into the frozen
Cheyenne ground just in time to leave for school.
Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His chapbook, All the Songs Sung (Angel Flight Press), and his fourth poetry collection, The Broad Grin of Eternity (WordTech Editions) arrived in 2021. His poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of Net Anthology and three times for a Pushcart Prize.
