Poetry |

“Go On, Then,” “Fire” & “Vanishing Points”

Go On, Then

 

Many people have wanted a thin gold chain like I’ve put around my neck

Lark and primrose on one bone china mug, shamrock and a curlew on the other

When I stroke the finch enameling and then lift the lid, the heavy miniature piano plays “Windmills of Your Mind”

Next to the recliner, the sewing

Inside the frayed cover, red spine, what I like more than Lenski’s toy giraffe poking from the boxcar behind the Little Engine is the drooping smile of the green Kind Engine

Which of us bought this book that’s still shrink-wrapped?

A stack of Rescue Squad follow-ups she would inscribe get well or sympathy

A diary of three weeks’ angst, barred from seeing a new grandchild

An entry slip for  Hadrian’s Wall inside the blue wallet in a white strap purse nested in a brown shoulder bag

What to do with the birdbath? the flowerbed’s lounging gnome?

How nice this extra little cushion on the car seat feels

Is there a name for these extra-large sunglasses that fit over eyeglasses?

For the large sky?

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

Fire

 

Lipstick brands your shoulder, embered flint, bare knee.

My four limbs trail from the kindling box.

 

Bead-heavy bearded iris drench the table

as a cat who went hungry and woke starving talks.

 

Out there the freshets wrinkle. A thrush swells

its dawn song. As yet the invisible bends us.

 

You curl, pillow crooked between your knees.

Doubled in bedclothes I take you from sleep — that heat.

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

Vanishing Points

 

 

When I dent the fender, pay late bills,

the line that rides too high up my forehead

is your eyebrow, a hint that you could

deal with results of the well-meaning:

six charity turkeys, one family holiday,

doctor-ordered uppers, your own I dunno

reflex response as the radio played, coffee

perked, you opened the paper.

 

Before tax day mother would harp

in rooms other than the one

where you sat with your beer

that you added accounts for a major

corporation all day but couldn’t

start ours until April 15th.

                 

You never knew insomnia. Your face

spoke a fugitive language.

At the work bench in the cellar

grimy dust topped jars of nails

whose piece of wood was never found.

Weekend handyman had slipped under.

Then the day job. You were hammered past feeling.

 

My pencil would point to the ceiling.

I pointed it back: you know something,

at least your eyebrow does.

I stayed put on the chair

trying to figure the answer.

 

Tax extension came due in late summer.

Flicking moribund Japanese beetles

to an old coffee cans inch of gas,

youd be visibly around

mowing the lawn between Lucky Strikes,

barreling the station wagon to the shore.

 

One of these days, Alice!

roared from the screen on weekend poker nights

while Connor or Cooney or Burke was riffling the cards.

In pajamas, we slid our faces through the staircase bars.

Our hands went chill, mouths wide with Ralphs pow! right in the kisser.

Later, smoky, sloshy, you slipped the discards for the second draw.

Your face lit like the tube, the Kramdens’ frugal happiness

flickered to a band, a wavery arch of black on white.

 

When I cleaned out the house I tossed

in the pit color-code barley and silk

on a weekly geography map of a land

overseas, a test on original sin, a

quiz on the three-personed God. I tossed

dirt on the Father old sediment, Son

his eruption in time, the Spirit’s compressed

combination of forces no one could explain.

 

Hold me under the breakers — Give me a quarter — Rub my back

Daddy — Weeks at the ocean, hot dogs and tickets, leaky taps,

not enough rooms. Your voice was my Hansel and Gretel, your eyes

my report card. Night after night, ready to rest, you lifted your palm

from the small of my back, then your fingers — More, Daddy —

Your hand whispered so long in its circle you’d thought me asleep.

Contributor
Mary Gilliland

Mary Gilliland is the author of Ember Days (2024, Codhill Press), The Devil’s Fools (2022) and The Ruined Walled Castle Garden (2020). In the pool of the sea’s shoulder is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She is a recipient of a Stanley Kunitz Fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center, a Cornell University Council on the Arts Faculty Grant, and the 2023 International Literary Seminars Kenya/Fence 1st Prize in Poetry.

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