Two Poems (November 20, 2009. Issue 11.)
Lira and the King Buffet of Hudson, Florida
She thought it was a dessert
that sat cold and rolled into a rice canister-
a compact collection of fish, nori, and wasabi.
The old woman fixated on the sushi before her.
“What a lovely dessert,” she said. “Who got this?”
Her fingers poked the rice hide
and the sushi roll wobbled, then settled again.
She caressed its side and noticed the soft bumps
where the rice was strung together.
The bumps reminded her of her childhood home in the hills of Virginia.
“What a lovely dessert,” she said. “Who got this?”
By now her old hands recalled her calluses.
Her eyes ached from tiredness and not blinking.
She was holding the sushi roll. She felt its weight pressing against her hand.
She dropped it on its side and watched it roll.
Lira saw the treads of the sushi roll.
She remembered how her mother never owned a car.
Clarence used to carry her to town on his back.
The donkey was slow and uncomfortable
but her mother would send her for flour once a week despite her complaints.
She remembered how the neighbors would watch her ride sidesaddle
and how their son had found her lips for the first time
when she was trying out his new rope swing.
She looked up and brought the sushi roll close to her lips.
“What a lovely dessert,” she said. “Who got this?”
Lifting Railroad Ties for a Summer
Is the closest I have ever been to a religious experience.
Two hundred pounds of solid wood is planted in sand
and my back strains to tear one end from where it has sunken
in my effort to make a beer garden.
The back of the truck is full of these lumbering railroad ties.
I am the carpenter
of a retaining wall. I hammer three nails in ever tie. The hammer is
Awkward. Heavy.
Swinging it drives the three inch galvanized nails,
Like a judgment, forward.
I think I am developing stigmata as I drag
another tie through the sand.
It slows me down as the pathway is carved through.
With every inhale I am lanced in the side.
The sun at midday crowned my hair.
I fell three times
that day.
Not a soul came to me to receive my burden.
I drew the load back to my shoulder and stood.
The wall wailed with the cry of the three nails meeting
The angry head of the large mallet.
When my task reached its end, I slept but with no desire to rise again. |