Todd Osborne

Ode to August Walker

The week my grandmother died
I bought a 5-pack of Mission

Impossible movies on blu-ray
—and a blu-ray player. Watched

Tom Cruise grow older without seeming
to age, and all of this can be blamed

on grief, how it squirms its way into
every situation, no matter how mundane,

and you are crying outside of your apartment
door, your mother on the phone,

the one you love standing within arm’s reach,
and you remember seeing the newest trailer

—how Henry Cavill cocks his fists
like he knows they could kill a man back to life.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Todd Osborne is a poet and educator from Nashville, TN. His works have previously appeared at Tar River Poetry, CutBank, The Missouri Review, Redactions, Nat Brut and elsewhere. He is a poetry reader for Memorious and a feedback editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal. He currently lives and writes in Hattiesburg, MS, with his wife and their two cats.