#114: Three Poems by Bernadette Geyer

~This poem was previously published in The Evansville Review (2008).

Fire Ants Invade Hong Hock See Buddhist Temple

No one ever said

the path to enlightenment

would be easy.

Nor did they mention

it would be strewn

with fire ants

falling from the sacred Bodhi tree

onto the backs

of worshippers seeking shade.

No one warned

that letting go of pain

would be a daily koan

to wrap psychic arms

around in holy embrace.

But there they are—

real as wounds—

a colony of fire ants

the monks cannot kill,

knowing they could

return as one next time.

The vacuum transfer

was a failure. They can’t even

flick the beasties from their skin

(Do no harm).

Welts rise like prayers.

The worshippers decline

in numbers; something

must be done.

The monks say

if someone comes unbidden

to get rid of the ants

it is the will of the universe.

They’ll just be over there,

praying, eyes closed

tight against seeing.

*****

                                                                                   

#113: "Car Wash" by Joseph M. Schuster

 ~This story originally appeared in Missouri Review (1988).

            Thief wonders if it will rain.  The smell of it fills the air. Miles to the west, beyond the town limits, a line of black full-bellied clouds moves into the valley.  He stands up to look at them from where he is working on his mother's roof. Two blue jays flap angrily around him, swooping and scolding.  Thief is trimming branches from the tree where they have their nest.

            "Yes, I see it," he says, waving his arms to drive them off.

            The branches are low. If there is an ice storm this winter, the weight will pull them even lower until they scrape the shingles. They could put a hole in the roof. Thief has cut six branches from this tree and another dozen from other trees that surround the house.

            He has also caulked the flashing around his mother's chimney, and cleaned the debris—dead leaves, maple seeds, twigs—from the gutters. Some of the seeds had sprouted in the decaying leaves. Thief pulled them out, tiny trees with three or four leaves and thin white hairs for roots.

            He used eighteen trash bags to collect it all.  As he filled each, he tied it closed, and threw it off the roof.  Some split when they hit the ground.

            He's been at work for three hours and has another hour to go, if the light holds.  It's 5:30.  He still wants to weed the flowerbeds on either side of the front porch. The statue of the Virgin in one of the beds is dirty, covered with cobwebs.

            Thief has tried to take better care of his mother since his father died six months ago.  He works around her house every Saturday, mowing the lawn, fixing leaking faucets, painting rooms, laying new tile in the bathroom.  He's told her she should sell the house and, even though she says she won't, he wants it ready to put on the market.  It is too large for one woman.  There are four bedrooms. Two and a half baths. Thief thinks of how the house will look in the shorthand of the real estate ad: W of O'ville. 2-story. 4 br. 2 ½ b.  fin bsmt. amenities..

            The amenities are a new dishwasher, a side-by-side refrigerator/freezer with an icemaker and a cold-water tap, a new gas stove. Thief gave them to her from his hardware store.

            His mother never uses them. She doesn't cook at home.  All she keeps in the refrigerator is milk for her cat and a few beers for Thief.  She likes her meals out, she says; she doesn't like eating alone.

#112: "Her Favorite Book" by Jonathan Weinert

~This poem previously appeared in The Kenyon Review (2008).

Her Favorite Book

1.

smelled of Red Astrachan apples and rust,

smelled of library, the long untethered afternoons

made, like any book, a door

She gripped it as its red

skin puckered from its spine,

she cradled it, the gold

                                      stamping on its boards defaced

                                      by her attentions

2.

Big light blistered through the cunning trees—magnolia,

white ash, Carolina silverbell with sawtoothed leaves     Sharp

electric smells of severed grasses mixed

          with smells of watered dust, of dusted rain

          Little balled-up fists of rain

          hanging in the highest leaves     Hush-a-bye babes, don’t you cry

          she sing-songed to herself, a practice mother

          trying on a kindness

          like a Sunday dress

3.

She read, in August heat, and felt the stitching of her shorts-hem

bite into her thigh     She tasted metal

in the socket where her last front tooth

had fallen out

                          imagining herself a hundred years ago

                          and ten years older—capable, mature,

                  

                          as she and Clara Barton

                          bound up men’s strange wounds with husks

         

                          there being no more bandages

4.

The book smelled of care and chloroform and suffering,

of pain and battle and the cries

of wounded soldiers bleeding in Antietam mud

or freezing in the drifts at Fredericksburg,

                                                                     swarms of black flakes

                                                                     falling in their faces

5.

Shoeless, gloveless, ragged, wringing blood out

of her laden skirt, she waded to the far

red bank of Acquia Creek with loads of biscuits

and supplies

Virginia, bring that saw and lantern here     She bent above

the vague white faces, speaking to her

now and then of mothers, daughters, sweethearts, wives    

It pleased her to be tending men, despite the grimness

and the strain, to earn their gratitude and curb their pain

                                                                             

6.

Her father, dead already seven years—

beyond her help, beyond her memory

She bent above him, in her favorite book, and sheared

his ruined limb away     Hush my baby, don’t you cry

—each stroke of the saw blade

binding her to him, letting her inside him,

cutting her to bone

*****