DIY
written by: Kevin Daniel Scheepers
I inherited my father’s screwdrivers, spanners,
G- and C-clamps,
hammers, pliers, and an assortment
of lustrous and rough
nails, screws
and mismatched fittings—
all overfilling his t/rusty crayon-blue
toolbox.
I wear his turpentine-stained shirts and paint-splattered
shorts,
I climb his ladders, scaffolds and metal-
work,
remember how his right knee ached and cracked
like a rusted pneumatic
piston,
and that was his good knee.
Spilled sugar crystals refracting sunlight
off the once spotless
kitchen counter, instinctively looked
away
like it was the sparkly, bluish flash
of his welding arc—
gone
are the days.
Kevin Daniel Scheepers is a young man from Pretoria, South Africa. He completed an MSc in Biotechnology in 2023, but always maintained a personal interest in the written arts, particularly poetry. His work has previously been published in Brittle Paper, Emergent Literary, Audience Askew, Harrow House Journal, South Africa Poetry Magazine, Academy of the Heart and Mind, and Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine, and is soon to be published in Feed The Holy and Aorta Literary Magazine.
