Photograph by Brenda Yamen |
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OFF JACKSONVILLE ROAD
By David McAleavey Behind the abandoned apples an embrace of woods thinner to the right, due north. Then a cornfield. Left up to the west crest field yields again to woods grown tight around a house given up, rose reverted wild in front. No glass, no doors. Collapsed cellar steps. Walls puffed, plaster bursting off the laths, pressed tin ceiling all adroop. Once I climbed cautious up the stairs to check: two tight blank rooms in places open to the snowy sky, droppings everywhere. No evidence to use to build a biography. The kitchen stove from the 30's tilting, no longer either cozy hearth or focus of hated labor. The pot placed on its slanted cook-surface had rusted well in place. Three cloudy jars scattered on the disintegrating floor. No wall calendar. A few moldy wads of what probably once was Life. HUGE ENGINES, IDLING By David McAleavey You climb into the cockpit step onto the exchange enter the wedding bed. You reach around the rock jut whose other side unseen you are to scale. On the divided highway a car comes across the median out of control and right at you so you swerve across where he came from skidding to safety on the frontage road, lucky, lucky, lucky. What fortune to be here now. (Misfortune’s huge engines, idling.) The cutting sends out rootlets sufficient to secure the water it needs. There may be water. YOU, WILLIAM GARRETT By David McAleavey The scales are off exactly a nickel. That’s why I keep a nickel in the pan. You used it in your pharmacy, the family story says. When? A hundred years ago or more, Emporia, Kansas. Also I have your oval photo in an oval frame, part of my share of Mother’s trove — the only heir when her parents died, she left us rooms of stuff like this. The oval frame’s gold-toned, hung in a lyre-stand so it swivels. You’d married Mother’s great-aunt and died when Mother was seven. She could well have heard your Britishisms (hailing from Derby), seen this white tie, your wingtip collar, three-piece suit, lapels piped with a bit of gloss. A rugged moustache, hair imperfectly parted. Handsome. Right near the eyes a sepia hint of having things to say and no one to say them to. No children in the marriage, is why we own these red countertop scales (true to the quarter-ounce up to ten pounds), the black and carmine oriental rug still gorgeous, though in places threadbare from when it was folded up for storage. We’ve laid it out in Andrew’s old room, Aunt Mavy’s rug. You (your photograph) stand on the glass-fronted bookcase neither stern nor soft nor sad nor stiff.  David McAleavey’s fifth and most recent book is HUGE HAIKU (Chax Press, 2005), and he has had poems in many journals over the years, including Poetry, Ploughshares, and Georgia Review. Recently he’s had poems in several dozen journals, both online and in print, including Poetry Northwest, Denver Quarterly, diode poetry journal, and Epoch, among other places. He teaches literature and creative writing at George Washington University in Washington, DC. |
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