Just Another Walk on Water

When I stumble on the gunwales, now and then
Come visions of missing the handrail some wave:

Of treading water, cold seeping inward,
Watching my boat drive on driverless.
(Regretting I could never train it
To come when I whistled.)
Treading water with that ship receding
The only dot of heat on the horizon.

Wondering just what I’d say to myself
In that last wet conversation.

:: John Skapsi, in Going for Coffee (1981)

Poem to the Sea

She’s a cunning bitch,
waits at the periphery
for double vision
then one light chop and
vertigo sinks
like a toy boat down the ear canal.

It’s a miserable existence
on this trawler,
5 a.m. bacon frying
1800 r.p.m. gastric juices brining
sifto salt up the nose,
guts sliding like a fish on a wet board;

so tie me leeward and bury me
with coffee fumes,
diesel, potato scraps and egg.

Leaning over this edge
nothing is as constant as the
sea always moving;

even the swell of my breasts
makes me sick.

:: Carolyn Borsman, in Going for Coffee (1981)

Tool Box

Under the rusting red metal lid we’re waiting for you—your father’s tools.
We always knew you weren’t going to build a doghouse or repair the stairs or
tighten a bibcock faucet, but we wanted to be of use as in the old days. Ah, the
old days! When we heard your father’s tread on the basement steps, we were
thrilled. The hammer clenched its head, the bubble trembled in the level, the
pliers stretched its jaws. But after your father died it was worse than we ex-
pected. You carted us out to your car, left us for months in the trunk, and then
stuck us on the floor of this hall closet next to the vacuum cleaner. Now the
hacksaw’s teeth are rusting, the file’s worn down, and the measuring tape sags
beside the plane. The poor jackscrew, no longer attached to a work bench, has
grown forgetful, and thinks it’s really a micrometer caliper. All you care about
is duct tape these days, tearing off flashy shreds to cover your botched work
while the tough little nails languish. So watch out! All of us in here are fed up
with your disregard for some of mankind’s oldest inventions, so if you ever do
open this lid you’re going to get hurt.

:: Maura Stanton, in New Ohio Review (2009)

The Truck Driver's Husband: A Letter

after Ezra Pound, after Rihaku (Li Tai Po)

While Mom was still cropping me crewcut close,
I played around the trailer parks, in jeans
and hot-rod tee shirts, vandalizing all.
You used to swing by—swing your girlish hips—
smack your red lips off cherry Popsicles,
and say that I could just whip the weenie
forever. So we plagued that crazy place,
taunting the neighbors, pissed on and pissed off.

But we were married soon, when you got pregnant.
I was frightened, didn’t laugh for years.
I hired on at Smitty’s Gulf for peanuts—
pumped gas, changed oil, learned how to fix a car.
When you’d come down with Danny on your hip,
I wouldn’t look up from underneath the hood.

At twenty-six I wanted you forever.
Never sorry then, I stared away,
dreamed of the place I’d have with you, the home
where I would die someday, be carried out.

At thirty-eight you got your license, left
to drive a rig from Florida to Maine.
And you’ve been gone twelve months today. The semis
winding out at night still make me think.

I’m sober seven months and painted the house.
I wish you’d seen the garden here this year:
tons of tomatoes, four bushels of beans.
It hurts. I’m sorry now. My beard is peppered.
If you swing past and have some time to talk,
call me, please, and I’ll come out to meet
you, anywhere you like on I-95.

:: Patric Pepper, Temporary Apprehensions (2005)

Spearing

In August he speared tobacco, the long stalk,
like a girl in green skirts, lifting her,
balancing her—then the hollow crack
through the marrow as she came down.
On the ground, the velvet leaves wilted
like difficult tropical things, lopped
for the tourists to poke and hold to the light.
Late in the day, when I drove the tractor
into the field, I watched him shift his weight
and lift each lath to the scaffolding of the wagon.
There was an awkward moment, unmistakable,
when he held the leaves in his arms,
against the length of his body, setting his hand
for the last handling; and he breathed in
the leaves’ dust, his mouth on the leaves’ hair.
Many times in August, the hottest days,
I saw him embrace, like a father who knows his crimes,
these withering girls.

:: Janet Kauffman, Where the World Is (1988)

Building a New Home

The generator kicks and whines,
steam shovel treads grind limestone
to dust. I got up at dawn,
the first blue light anointing
the sweaty backs of the clouds,
both eyes burning with essential salt
leaking down my scalp.
New buildings
Break away from the red broken clay.
Excavation before foundation—
five thousand nail per plywood frame.
We’re working towards something
better—full of daylight, and easy
to enter.
This must be
the song my father taught me:
build each one as if it were my own.
Always take care of my tools,
they are the only things that matter
in this world. They will make me
known among these men.

:: Timothy Geiger, Blue Light Factory (1999)

The Bad Old Days

The summer of nineteen eighteen
I read The Jungle and The
Research Magnificent. That fall
My father died and my aunt
Took me to Chicago to live.
The first thing I did was to take
A streetcar to the stockyards.
In the winter afternoon,
Gritty and fetid, I walked
Through the filthy snow, through the
Squalid streets, looking shyly
Into the people’s faces,
Those who were home in the daytime.
Debauched and exhausted faces,
Starved and looted brains, faces
Like the faces in the senile
And insane wards of charity
Hospitals. Predatory
Faces of little children.
Then as the soiled twilight darkened,
Under the green gas lamps, and the
Sputtering purple arc lamps,
The faces of the men coming
Home from work, some still alive with
The last pulse of hope or courage,
Some sly and bitter, some smart and
Silly, most of them already
Broken and empty, no life,
Only blinding tiredness, worse
Than any tired animal.
The sour smells of a thousand
Suppers of fried potatoes and
Fried cabbage bled into the street.
I was giddy and sick, and out
Of my misery I felt rising
A terrible anger and out
Of the anger, an absolute vow.
Today the evil is clean
And prosperous, but it is
Everywhere, you don’t have to
Take a streetcar to find it.
And it is the same evil.
And the misery, and the
Anger, and the vow are the same.

:: Kenneth Rexroth, The Collected Shorter Poems (1963)