Vern Fein
CeresMy only daughter left, spirited away
by what it matters not. Ceres my soul mate now. I command neither Spring nor Winter, crops sprouting, crops dying. I can only weep like that goddess and understand why lethal ice and screaming snow were the least she could do to birth revenge. I will wait, Daughter, a visit blossoming, dying on the vine, cycles without end. Old Horse BarnTwenty-six daily mucked stalls
for a bevy of broken down thoroughbreds still hoping for the dreams their thin legs rest on. A water trough, a feed box, old hoses that crack in winter, harbinger of flies in summer, clouds of DDT. A teen ripped from my city neighborhood, home, friends, school by my gambling father. Isolated now, listening to Hambone, an older black farmhand, stroking one of his thirty-nine cats, stroking my pain. He urged me not to run away. A Selfish WishI attended the funeral of a friend yesterday.
“Too young, too young-- He was just fifty-one.” buzzed voices like provoked bees, a stick thrust into the respectful line, the hive of sorry; the large crowd. “At what age will I go?” Hopefully, only a few will attend mine, many years from now. A plain room with steel chairs, a foggy light, a few drooping flowers, a guest book with a few scrawled names, a lone fly buzzing the dim. Because I had lived so long, most friends had passed, hardly anyone there. A woman conducted. I could see the sad masks of my aging children. A strange pleasure rose in me. I felt grateful to be so alone. No One Looks at Old MenI sit in my coffee shop,
day after day, moving the spoon to catch the white streak the overhead light swirls in my cup. Sit and watch no watching. Maybe I could change that? Light up the gray faces on the counter stools. Next Monday I will wear shoes that don't match, maybe a tennie and a boot. Tuesday, a pink polka dot tie, with my Purple Heart pinned on, outside my coat. A large, orange comb in my left over hair, Wednesday. Thursday, the rainbow bandanna my only daughter gifted me long ago. On the first day of the weekend, my teeth in a glass on the table. But that would not be nice to the young waitress who wears the watermelon uniform. She doesn't look at me when she always smiles, but she is very careful with my cup, filling even when it is almost full. Then, Saturday, my old, rusted service revolver. Just set it in on the table in full view. Would the cook notice as he does when I sit too long? I don't come here on Sundays because it's closed. |
Divine PokerOh God— lay down Your hand,
show Your cards! We have been here so long, the game must be over. Lay down Your hand on this worn, green felt Earth. Why do You wear a visor, never count Your chips? We have had beauty for snacks, pain for drinks all these many nights, sitting in our dim world, hats tilted down, cigars, cigarettes polluting our room. What do You have? A straight, a flush, a full house even four of a kind or just a skinny pair? Maybe You have nothing or are bluffing? What chance do we have! Show us Your hand. It is about Time. Carrion ThoughtsOutside an autumn Festival, stopped on a back, dirt road.
I slipped out of my car, finger touched lips to hush my family. Aimed my awkward camcorder, big as the buzzard perched in the naked tree, wings expanded, ugly and beautiful, ominous as a storm. Look! my kids exulted. The driver behind, another kind of buzzard, didn’t care. His horn blared. Magnificence vanished, flew into a sun-sharp sky. Carrion thoughts. The Not Lying DownA ravenous, drunken lion who threw everything
against those three sheets of the wind that never stops blowing coupled with a lamb gentler than the one nursing March into April. the cars coupling in the freight yard, clanging metal on metal bound lamb bleat sacrifice tethered to a stake Their offspring, three brothers in a restaurant strain to hear each others’ disintegrating voices. Talk of fishing in retirement waters, and fish, like their children, that got away, like the God of their youth. Stalking their table, they do not talk of the lion who quit lying with the lamb. Thomas Carlyle's Maid: On Accidentally Burning His French Revolution ManuscriptCarlyle’s maid at her first job
far from the rutty hut of childhood. “Mum, I’m peacock proud.” Mum’s eyes flashed the color of new coins. “Do your best is all.” In a room bigger than her whole life this maid, anxious to please, stared into the roaring fire. Dreaming through every article in the room: the gilded clock, a portrait of the brocaded matriarch, old painted vases with new flowers, fancy teapots of every design, a wall of books, beautiful dark arms circling the room. “I cannot have, but I can touch, touch and clean and straighten and re-set and move and move back and preen these pretty things. O, a mess of papers. That cannot be! Into the fire with thee.” “Dear Thomas, I never knew you. You wrote about a revolution of the poor. Then sacked your maid. At least you did not chop off her head!” |