Winning

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog. Part of that is the inevitable busy-ness that seems to follow me these days. Ironic, since I have had a lot of good news on the writing front. But first the busy-ness.

For the first time since moving here, I have a “real” job. I still am doing about 15 hours a week of consulting and contract work, but I also have a part time station in a physical, real academic department, where people introduce me as “the statistician.” It’s similar to my contract work, but it is also harder to slack off/leave everything til the last minute.

Jake is in school, and settling in. It’s good for him and for me. Other than him sleeping through the night, knowing I am dropping him off at 8 and am “free” til 11:30 is the biggest change in my life since he was born. He’s also developing his own little personality and attitude and that’s great. As I’ve said before, I will take all the terribleness that comes with being two if it also means he’s starting to be his own person. He’s surprising me with a new word pretty much every day, which is kind of cool.

Then there’s school. Last semester, I ended my second undergrad career, as my advisor thought I could handle grad classes and I had complete the equivalent of an English major. It was kind of bittersweet. I hear a lot about millenials and how awful they are supposed to be, but honestly, my classmates were for the most part great, and definitely a lot more together than I was, probably til 28. So this semester, I am enrolled in a grad level course, as “non-degree-seeking” while I wait the results of my application for an MFA program. (yes, I applied, re-taking the GRE and all). The class is interesting and exciting but it’s also a LOT of work.

So, that’s where we are in the non-writing piece of things. And, I will say this. I struggled and continue to struggle with figuring out what the balance should be. I am currently reading a book called “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” which is probably fortuitous. It’s about some combination of stoicism and being true to your priorities which is exactly my problem these days.

I am doing my best to be a good colleague and be productive in my day job, but the top priorities really are Jake and Sherise, and the writing. And both domains are doing pretty well. As some of you may know, there was some early concern about Jake having some language delays, but that has been pretty much cleared up. His speech therapist says he’s actually now a little ahead of his language milestones. Pretty much every day is a new word (or a word applied to a new concept). Yesterday the word was “stuck”

And the writing. So, since the last time I posted here, I have won two (TWO!!) paying contests. The first, which they announced this fall, was with the national English honor’s society’s publication The Rectangle. That has since been published. Here’s the link (poem shows up on page 9):

http://english.org/sigmatd/pdf/publications/rectangle.pdf

I am pretty happy with this poem, although it isn’t aiming for anything really big.

 

The other award is a major one. It’s the annual poetry contest with the Southern Indiana Review. Here’s the link to the announcement. If and when I can share the actual poem, I will. But this is a poem I am very proud of and a big deal.

 

http://www.usi.edu/media/5601556/mohrresults2016.pdf

 

That’s where it’s at. Cross your fingers for me, re grad school. Official word is theoretically coming this month.

 

La Belle

After a long publishing hiatus, my poem “La Belle” was published a few days ago as part of the third volume of The Avenue, a special themed issue titled “Woman”. Here is a link to the Amazon page for it. There are a lot of great stories and poems here, and at 12 dollars, it’s definitely as much fun as 4 cups of coffee.

http://www.amazon.com/Avenue-III-Chris-Tarry/dp/0996914617

I just wanted to share a little bit about my poem and about what I think are the benefits of my current project of taking classes and getting geared up the take an MFA.

This poem was written as part of a poetry workshop class, run by the inimitable Karyna McGlynn, a year and a half ago. It was 15 or so really cool undergrads and me, sharing our work, helping each other get better, and learning a lot about poetry. Karyna is a successful poet and had a lot of great insights about the craft, but also the industry (if that’s the right word for such a non-industrial enterprise).

This poem is a good example. It’s an ekphrastic poem, which is something I wouldn’t have even thought of doing before this seminar and was originally written as an assignment for the class.

Of course, the first draft was pretty raggedy and that’s the other cool thing about workshop classes. Getting input from 16 thoughtful people (or even six thoughtful people and ten people who are obliged to pretend to be thoughtful) can only make it better. I am dramatically happier with the end result than I was with the first version. Thinking back, even the less pleasant or thoughtful of the classmates (and there weren’t many) still taught me SOMETHING over the course of the semester. 

The poem itself has just been published, so go check it out. The song that it is responding to is “Lady Marmalade”, by LaBelle (sound familiar?), which was Patti LaBelle’s vanity group from the 70s. It’s vaguely based on some actual experiences, from my time in Montreal in grad school, when I had a good friend who sung in clubs and did a very great cover of this song. I hope I’ve captured something of what the scene was like in Montreal for this kind of music, in this context. I also like to think it says something about the male gaze, which brings me back to themed issue.  Finally, and perhaps most of all, it’s about what lasts and what doesn’t last and how some experiences just exist outside of time.

In any case, check it out. The poem itself is unlikely to be such an experience for you, but you never know.

Real Life

Having recently spent seven hours in an urgent care clinic, I got to thinking about the things that draw me away from writing. Not just the things that take time away from anything I can carve out to be creative, but things that disturb the head space that I seem to need for anything remotely creative to come out.

It’s been a hell of a year and a half for writing.

Hurricane Jakey has been a blessing. My son is a very cool little person and I wouldn’t trade him for anything. But he’s been bad for my creative process and not just in a “I need to be in the right state of unhappiness to write well” way. I learned that I need more sleep than the average person to be anything other than a dreary zombie. I did not get a full night’s sleep for more than 11 months. I wanted to die. At least temporarily for like ten hours. The first night he slept through the night, close to his birthday, I felt like crying. Such a small thing I had taken for granted all my life. Going to sleep and safely assuming I’d be that way til my alarm went off. It was useful to know that it was possible to be too depressed to write, that whatever the optimal level of misery was for the creative process, it was less than infinity.

Everything flows from that. It was a hell of a year and a half for work, and I am only now digging out from under the various work projects I committed to and am behind on. The publications took a dip, the billable hours took a dip, and I have no doubt that I was not doing my best technical, professional writing. Or data analysis.

Oddly, my chronic health issue has been the least of my problems. Having Crohn’s Disease makes it always unclear whether you have a stomach flu or a flare or food poisoning. I’ve been blessed in general to be pretty good most of the time. My recent adventure turns out to have been, not a flare up as I originally thought, but E. Coli food poisoning. That coincided with my final paper for my lit class.

And speaking of class, it’s been an odd combination of a drag and really invigorating. It’s nice to have any contact at all with adults, but honestly, the fall semester, my first semester back, was not a lot of fun. It’s undoubtedly all what I put in, but I found myself doing the bare minimum of creative writing, even for class. I think the quality of what I produced was higher, but I just didn’t click with anyone in the class, or for that matter, my American lit class. This semester, my creative writing class was canceled, and I focused on the lit class and it was really great. Seriously, Post-colonial lit with Professor Aboul-ela is great and it seems to attract smart people.

Anyway, back to writing. It feels like something is coming unstuck. I hope that’s right. Now that I am less than 2 months behind on work and don’t owe anybody a term paper, I am feeling less stressed about everything and the writing is slowly coming back. Jakey starts day school in the fall and I am honestly looking forward to the extra 8 hours a week of absolute free time that I can fill how I choose.

I am working on a poem about castrating cows, which continues the theme I had earlier of farming accidents. Although, it’s not that different if you take the perspective of the steer.

Rejected by Whom?: Red Neck Poems

It's been a busy six months. I still don't know how stay at home parents get much done other than child care, but I have been writing a little here and there. I took another couple of courses that have just finished up, including intro to creative writing (which I took after, instead of before the slightly more advanced poetry writing workshop). I have been accepted into the creative writing concentration at U of H and next semester will be doing a Poetic Forms course in addition to post colonial lit. So, expect lots of limericks about colorism.

But the writing: quality feels like it's going up, despite the pretty low rate of quantity. I am submitting my stuff to somewhat higher profile journals, although I am never sure how to tell a good journal from a less good one, other than some look pretty awful. Submitting to a few contests here and there, which brings me to sixfold.org. It advertises itself as being all judged by poets and so in theory, the Sixfold process is a good one. Be judged by other poets and so many other poets that you are sure to come up with the “true” measure of your work, compared with others.’ I was a little skeptical because it felt a little gimmicky, but what the heck.

I submitted two poems and dutifully did three rounds of voting. One was a long and (for me) playful poem about the movie Live and Let Die and verbal games that couples play with each other. The other was a poem about a rural couple who are still together after a long time. Nothing earth-shattering.

 In general, the poems I read got better each round, suggesting that overall, the better poems were getting through.

My own poems made it through only one round of voting, so had a total of six votes. I had two 6’s (meaning, they thought my poems were the best of the six sets they read), I had two 1’s (my poems were the worst), and two 3’s. This isn’t exactly the perfect middle of the perfect scores, but it’s pretty close.

Being insecure, I started with the feedback from the two 6’s. It was constructive, thoughtful, and had suggestions for improvement. The 3’s were less positive, and while I didn’t agree entirely, they were written by people who had read and thought about what I wrote.

The 1’s I had saved for last. One of them had no comments at all. The other had this feedback, reproduced in its entirety: "Red neck poems with incorrect capitalization and punctuation do not appeal to me. Sorry, but writing a good poem is different than writing a good poem with bad punctuation and capitalization. Appreciated the themes with everyday life in them."

I think that kind of speaks for itself. I probably won’t do the sixfold thing again. It seems as much of a crap shoot as sending stuff to a particular editor. If it’s a journal I like, I at least know the editor has tastes that somewhat gel with mine.

“red neck poems”

Sheesh.

The finite universe of time, and enjambments

Since the last time I posted, the big news is that I am now a dad. Most people reading this blog already know this, but just putting it out there. Being a dad takes time. And energy. So, that's where the writing has been. I have slowly eased back into writing a few poems here and there. Not nearly as many as I was before Jakey came, but still some pieces. I have resisted the urge to write sacchariney odes to childish innocence, but perhaps that's a mistake.

So, the volume of writing is down, but I am actually pretty happy with the quality of the little bit I have been doing. Far fewer pieces that I am embarrassed by and a few I am a little proud of. Quality over quantity or lowering standards.

Nothing new on the publishing front, but I was happy to be shortlisted for the Fish poetry prize.

http://www.fishpublishing.com/2015-short-long-lists.php#ppls15

The feedback I got was that the poem was very nice but I really need to work on my enjambment. Ironically, this was a reworking of the first piece I used in my poetry workshop class last semester and my prof, Karyna, gave me the feedback- wait for it!- that I need to work on my enjambments.

So, I still need to work on my enjambments. I have since tweaked "some kind of record" somewhat, so we'll see if it finds a home.

Enjambments

beautiful, and nothing hurt

Just a quick update. An online ebook has published a poem of mine, "beautiful, and nothing hurt"

The outfit is called Caffeine Presse, they were formerly Wednesday Night Writes, and I am really happy with their treatment of the poem. It looks really nice on the page.

Here is the link to the e-book.
http://issuu.com/wednightwrites/docs/caffeine_presse_online2/1?e=9477927/9490655

My poem is on page 8.

This was one of those poems that was a long time in taking the shape it needed to take. It was originally a two page monstrosity, overly didactic, and kind of a download of only quarter formulated thoughts and unconsidered emotions. I had to get a lot of distance from it, and sometimes the best way to get distance from something is to hack it to pieces and build it back up.

The contrast between start to finish is pretty dramatic. I am happy with the end result and embarrassed by the beginning.

The title, incidentally, comes from the epitaph in Kurt Vonnegut's book Slaughterhouse Five:
"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

Ironically, enough, also about getting some distance.

moonlight, the serious moonlight

Amongst the rush of classes starting, I had another poem published.

I called it "moonlight, the serious moonlight" and, unsurprisingly, it was published in an online magazine called The Moon Magazine. I wrote the poem a few months ago, and there it sat. Moon had a call for poems and writing on "the shadow knows/facing the dark side" and about dealing with your own shadow.

The poem seemed to fit, so I sent it in.  Here is my poem. I was listening to a lot of David Bowie:

http://moonmagazine.org/rich-thompson-moonlight-serious-moonlight-2014-08-30/

Also, check out the whole special issue, a lot of nice, dark writing. They also have a lot of older themed issues as well.

Everybody needs an editor

Not much new on the writing front. I am working on my novel.

The poetry is there, just waiting. I recently submitted and got accepted a poem at Three Line Poetry, which, ironically enough, publishes only three line poems. The poem was originally 6 lines, which is pretty short for me, but I condensed it down to its essence, and the result was pretty good, if I say so. I originally had a title for it, but with three lines, you don’t get a title. The title was “but gin is not like love.”

You can see it here (It’s in free issue 27): www.threelinepoetry.com

I also just finished an essay for the undergrad English class I am taking, that had a two page limit. I have honestly never though of myself as being especially wordy- I usually struggle to fill the time, but in getting things to fit, it was amazing how much of the first draft could be cut or streamlined without losing the gist.  I was reminded of my oulipost experience earlier this year.

I sent something to Three Line Poetry a year or so ago, and it got turned down. Looking at those three lines now, I could have said what I wanted to say in one of those lines.

I’m not about to cancel my cable and go live in the woods. But at least in terms of writing, I still have a way to go in getting rid of useless clutter.

The Summer of My Content: Random Thoughts on Happiness and Creativity

It’s been a while since I have put anything on my blog. That reflects, in part, some recovery from the month of Oulipost as well as the vagaries of the summer cycle of work and play. I have had a large clump of revise-and-resubmit requests on my academic work; and my better half and I have been traveling and just spending more time together. My running is getting more consistent, and I am just all-around busy. But that’s not the only reason the writing has taken a back seat. To be honest, I have gone through patches of far more productive writing when I have been far busier in real life.  And far more stressed.

 The novel is in stasis. The story in my head hasn’t moved forward from where it is, several chapters ahead of where it is on paper. Poems are coming out roughly once every three weeks.

 A friend asked me if I write love poems. The answer is in general no; certainly not poems that anybody would call love poems. I can only speak for myself, but it’s tough to write happy poems that aren’t incredibly embarrassing. I don’t think I am alone here. I recently read a journal that was a collection of poems about parenthood (NOT the surprisingly good fatherhood anthology). What struck me about the poems was how many were just awful. Page after page of what boiled down to “My child is a precious gift”, “I love my child” and/or, at best, “being  a parent is a lot of responsibility.” They were all like having a conversation on the elevator with an excessively friendly stranger. There’s probably something original that could be written on those themes, but I can’t think of what it might be.  So love poems? Not so much. It’s not just that I have been relatively lucky in that department; it’s that I’ve been really blessed and most of my regrets involve things I’ve done, not done to me. Guilt-riddled writing seems even more depressing than love-struck writing.  I don’t do either well, and I suspect most people don’t either. Love poems often seem like things best kept to oneself.

That seems to be true of “happy” poems more generally. When I look back at what I wrote as a teenager, the really embarrassing stuff that wasn’t all just angst plopped onto the page, was all various odes to love. A few were angsty odes to love, which may be worse.

I originally started writing seriously as a way of working through some bad things that had happened. Once I could get past the initial output of self-pity, some of the things that came out were things I could be proud of. Even now, the stuff I write that I feel the best about are all about dealing with some fundamental and ultimately sad and/or disappointing facts of life. Other people can do whimsical or humorous and God bless them, but that is not me. My recent experiences with Oulipost loosened things up a little bit in that direction, but “lighthearted” is a difficult thing to force if it’s not coming. It happens, and I’m glad when it does, but I can’t count on that (and probably shouldn’t).

All of this is a long way of saying things are pretty good these days, and that may not be great for my writing. These things also come in cycles, and I am about to embark on some anxiety producing projects that are likely to bring me back down to my not-so-happy place.  In the meantime, I’m carving out time to write and hoping for something like the best.

Page and Spine, the long and the short

So, things have been humming along with my writing. I have kind of shifted into writing prose for a bit, but my backlog of poems is periodically getting accepted and published.


I feel the poetry coming back, but there's no particular reason to force it.


Here's a link to the latest pair that got published in an online venue, Page and Spine. They're both eclectic and voluminous, which is probably good for oddballs like me.


Here's the link to the poems


http://www.pagespineficshowcase.com/148/category/all/1.html


"amber of the moment' I started fiddling around with about a year ago, maybe a little less. The title is a line from Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five:


                  Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?"
                  "That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"
                  "Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber    with three ladybugs embedded in it.
                  "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

The poem is kind of a short story, which speaks for itself, in broad contours. Sometimes people have very little in common other than their mutual obligations.


"the meaning of enough" is one I wrote a long time ago- it was one of the first poems I wrote when I started back into writing,  in the winter of 2007. It's also kind of a short story. The title comes from some online debate I witnessed about anti-natalism, where someone mangled the Martin Amis quote: "Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough."  I was thinking a lot at the time about how, in many ways, the lives of some mentally ill people are way more heroic than anything I could ever do. The link between those notions formed a story and it seemed to require a pretty tight structure.


It's my wife's favorite poem of mine, an opinion she seemed to be unique in, given responses of various editors over the years. But it has found its home.

Skive, or Wasting Time

As mentioned a while back, one of my poems came out in November in Skive Magazine, their final, farewell issue. The theme of the issue is "farewells" and my poem in it is called "amen; the faithful and the true."


Here is a link to where you can get the issue.


http://www.skivemagazine.com/sales_2013_11_November_Farewell.html


"skive" as it turns out, means "to avoid work or duty by staying away or leaving early." So that feels pretty fitting; I've done a lot of staying away AND leaving early.


Another poem of mine has been accepted. This seems to be kind of a slow burn in terms of when it comes out, and given my history, there's always a small chance the outfit will fold between now and when they send the check.


I lost a haiku contest.
Less said
Better


The writing continues to come back, bad haikus aside. Care and feeding are important.

Among the Families of the Earth... and transitions

I wrote my first new poem in a long time last week. It was good. It was a sign that I am starting to settle into the new routine. I still struggle with feeling guilty every time I write creatively or read for fun, because I should be working. But that seems to be subsiding.

I have a new poem that has been accepted. And the outlet for my last poem has gone out of business.

Empirical Magazine seemed really cool and I was really excited that they printed my poem. But then they went more or less out of business, so the issue my poem appeared in was the last one. you can get the e-book version of the issue here and it has some cool stuff:

http://empiricalmag.blogspot.com/

Here is the poem, as I wrote it. It's largely fictional, and I think the point is the biblical quote that is alluded to: "You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins." Amos 3:2. There are a bunch of ways of reading this and I am not sure the way the character reads it. I wonder if there are some down-sides to so-called righteousness, if it creates barriers. Certainly, it's easy for the devout to be judgmental and unforgiving, and everything I read in the new testament suggests that these are every bit as bad as what is judged or unforgiven. This old testament fire and brimstone prophet can be read that way as well.

Here it is.

among the families of the earth

your father wakes; it’s five and cold,

steam; his breath, his head as it
is shaved. his wife, your mother,
stirs. the door clicks closed. the snow;
the shoveling, the salt; the half
mile to the bus on the Express.
its empty seats, he reads from
Amos, prays. but not for you.
 
perhaps not for his wife. the
listener, himself alone
and drifting through the morning
shards, will never tell.

the work is dirty, rodent eyes

from cages gleam. their foreign
ordered thoughts. the sawdust
always stinking. they breed;
mechanical and hostile. he records

his duty done, the bus again
the lights flick on as night
descends, the drifted sidewalk
(shovel, salt); the silent dinner
prayer; and living with
the consequences; sleep.

the best way out is always through

This one was published a while ago, and it's a print journal. The editors were very nice and encouraging, which always feels good. It's probably the publication I am happiest with, but I still have yet to find a home for some of what I think is my best work, and some of what Sherise thinks is my best work. Lately, I am getting rejection letters, either impersonal or mildly encouraging.

Given that this year has been pretty brutal in terms of time and energy to be creative, I'll take it.

Here it is, as it appeared in scissors and spackle.

http://www.scissorsandspackle.com/read/equino/current-issue-provate/poetry/richard-thompson/

the best way out is always through

the unpatched roof, the slip of ice on walking crossbeam, slick.
they found you thirty feet below; a steer had torn its stanchion
free and dragged it to the road, half-mad with thirst. They caught it
first then set about the feeding of the rest; and then they turned
to you: stiff in your soaked and frozen clothes. the balinghooks
that broke your fall had wedged themselves into your
chest, protruding, curved impossibly and complicating the work
they had. after an hour you became an unexpected
chore, a slab of frozen meat. they pried in vain and pulled
while younger Pierce was sent to fetch hot water, they sat
gathering breath and sweating from the work, drew lots for who
would bring your wife the news.

                                                  even my father, having loved
you more than anything he would before or since, felt nothing
but relief that it was someone else; already wishing you would
hurry up and melt enough to be pried free. Already thinking darkly
of his own: the long-cold breakfast, his own wife, her belly full,
his snow-snapped fences, night; the long cold days ahead of him

the nurse hung up the phone; restraints

As I mentioned earlier, this was published in Halfway Down the Stairs last winter. See here:

http://www.halfwaydownthestairs.net/index.php?action=view&id=329

I wasn't exactly sure I was happy with the decision about the line set up. Now that the moritorium has passed, here is the poem in the original form. I am pretty happy with it, but it was written a long time ago. It was one of the first ones I wrote back in 2007 when I first started writing again. It was originally more than twice the current length. I am glad I got it published before it disappeared entirely.

the nurse hung up the phone; restraints

until then chemical imbalance simply hid

a multitude of unforgiven sins we both
believed that it did not excuse the midnight
calls the smell the teeth the rotten shoes

when last we spoke I knew what loose
associations were you called me by my
fathers name and told me how to save
the world I felt every fraying strand of
thread rotating thoughts that dragged
and skipped and then unwound went dead.

Then there were two

If anyone asks, I can now say my creative writing hasn't just been published once.

The latest issue of Halfway Down the Stairs came out and "the nurse hung up the phone; restraints" is in it. HDTS is a nice online journal and every issue has a particular theme. This one is on "Farewell" and they took my poem.

I wrote it a while back.

They have first electronic rights, so here is a link to the poem, on their site:

http://www.halfwaydownthestairs.net/index.php?action=view&id=329

A better kind of rejection.

This year of long distance is just about as unpleasant as I expected it would be. The less said the better, but it's almost half over.

In terms of writing, things are limping along. The novel is going slowly, but going. Every time I write a little more, the story changes a bit, which keeps me interested, and occasionally surprised. A Good Thing.

Poems are less frequent, but probably a little better. Several of them, and the short story are off and being read.

I got a form rejection letter from one journal, and literally the next day learned that it had shuttered. I only hope that it wasn't the sheer mediocrity of my work that made the editors decide to chuck and go get an MBA or whatever.

I also sent two poems in to a different journal. Not my absolute best work, but fitting with the theme of an upcoming issue. I got a gentle rejection, which is progress. Up next, half-hearted rejections.

In the mean time, I am also getting back into the swing of reading.

Rejection

There's been a long silence here, and there has been in most of my writing life. I still write, and still write stuff I like a lot. But it's been a really dry stretch in terms of convincing other people to like it.

Since my poem in Relief, I have been rejected by the Antigonish Review, Off the Coast, Crazyhorse, and (this time) Relief.

Closure is always nice. Off the Coast sent me a nice brief note, saying I was recommended but didn't make the cut. Antigonish Review's rejection consisted of "oh, yeah, well, you're not here in our list of poems we're publishing so that probably means the poetry editor decided against you." Gee, thanks.

Didn't I get married just to avoid this kind of thing?

My first published poem

So, this poem appeared in the journal Relief, which bills itself as "A Quarterly Christian Expression." It's not explicitly Christian, but then a fair bit of what they publish isn't so either.

The theme of the issue was supposed to be love and war. Well, I guess that's about right. I always remember fencing as being something of a battle, and I hope this conveyed that.

The other thing that was interesting to me. Neither my wife nor the other couple of friends who read this before I submitted it knew what a maul was. I guess that's a point for the fact that my experiences don't generalize nearly as much as I might think they do. (For the record, a maul is kind of like a sledgehammer. But 'sledgehammer' would have seriously messed with the meter. And evoke Peter Gabriel).

The ending rhyme kind of snuck up on me, but I really felt it was inevitable.

In any case, here it is:


And he the maul

We’d start it once the frost was gone
He’d cut the posts and sharpen them
I’d peel the bark- slough it off
In white strips dripping sap
(My hands too cold to feel their pull).
And then I’d paint them creosote
While he changed gas and filed the saw
Half as big as me.

We’d drive as far as we could go
And then we’d hike the rest-
He with his six posts, I with four,
I with the bar and he the maul.
It was still damp and gray;
The woods were dark.

Above, the sun, and with it flies
Black clouds that pulsed and
Hummed our blood.
We’d never speak-they’d fill
Eyes, mouth, and nose;
They’d drown in sweat
Then coat the skin.

I’d think to stop, or swat, or spit
I don’t know what he thought
The maul was sharper than their song
He’d have a blackened crown of grime
That pressed into his eyes
The nearest thing I’d see to tears-
My father weeping flies.