A Christmas Night
It was a cold night
And there was ice on the road,
Our car started to slide
As it moved up the small hill,
And the headlights caught the old man
In a thin jacket
Pushing a cart filled with sticks.
There were some bundles and a package
Piled on top, and the old man
Grinned and waved at us
As he pushed the cart
Into the yard of the little house
Where a single light shone.
The tires gripped the road
And we drove on into the darkness,
But suddenly it was warm.
Why I Bought the Economy Size
Because she was not pretty,
her overbite designed to rip prey,
canines sharp as javelins, slight
lisp. Because she could stand
to lose a few pounds, and wore
a flowing flora, and a gray cardigan
strained across her chest. Because
she smiled when she talked, her voice
soft as a mother soothing a fussy child;
because she suggested the best bargain
but did not insist, just gently opened
the jar, offered it like a sacrament,
invited me to dip my finger into the cool
face cream, gently imploring, try it;
because I needed moisturizer, and she
needed that job, I bought the large size,
thanked her for the free gift, samples
wrapped in tissue paper and tucked
inside a pink pouch, the color of her dress.
— Pat Riviere-Seel
Little Betsy
A ghost is no good to a child.
Maybe he crooks a finger, as if to beckon
the girl to play. Maybe he bounds spritely
down corridors, into kitchens.
But if she hands him a dolly or ball
and he reaches with his spectral hand,
he cannot clutch the gift, and if his failed grasp
surprises him, if the lack of resistance —
for everything real resists the touch —
unbalances him, his incorporeal fingers
might graze the child’s offering hand.
What would you call the gooseflesh
raised by the frolicsome dead?
There is no joy in it, only a deep well
of longing cold, the kind that claws
through every crack in the wall.
— Ross White
On the Way Home
from my father’s funeral,
a mime is performing on the corner,
laid out on the concrete like a corpse,
pulling herself up with an invisible rope
as if hope were a cliff to climb,
then levitates over a pretend chair
as if preparing to eat, drinking
an empty glass of air, her palms
bringing into being the nuanced
shape of bread to be broken.
I sit on the edge of a scrap of plywood,
a makeshift seat, perch as if on a ledge
heeding the gravity of all the unsaid.
Everything her eyes imply is about
the last meal I shared with my father.
“Do you hear me?” she hints
with her hands that have
become her voice, her frown
a phrase, a black drawn-on tear
a lost syllable, then,
as though life were something tangible,
sets up an imaginary ladder,
points to a nebulous cloud
she intends to reach, waving goodbye
as she begins to climb into the sky.
— Linda Annas Ferguson
Balancing Act
I was once content with walking railroad
tracks to school, stone walls to church,
touching my toes to the sidewalk
for balance, stepping over cracks
that needed mending.
I balanced on city curbs,
my arms extended like wings
that would fly me to a nearby tree,
a wild turkey perching safely
on the lowest limb.
In school we balanced skinny legs
on beams six inches off the floor
to please Miss Brown,
especially proud
to do it backwards,
and I heard the story of
Dayton’s Great Flood of 1913,
how victims inched their escape
across telephone wires from the railway
station to Apple Street and safety.
Now I walk one tight rope after another,
and wonder about people
who tread on pavement with no cracks,
no broken mothers’ backs,
in sensible shoes, arms to their sides,
with no inclination to fly.
— Marsha Warren
The Ferry from Ocracoke to Swan Quarter
Laughing gulls hover:
a story below,
their shadows slide
and crux across the deck
of the Silver Lake —
painted white by convicts
from the Hyde County camp —
bound over the slick-cam Pamlico,
past a dredge-spoil island
where cormorants in black
frock coats congregate, exiled,
penitent, eyeing the ferry
with Calvinist reproach.
— Joseph Bathanti
We were losing the ridgeline to the dusk
when you asked, “What if I had stayed?”
Ten years is nothing
to a mountain —
unless you clear-cut
and gut it
for someone else
to move in.
I’ve done that too many times —
made my heart a gorge with a river
everyone floats through.
I looked at you
and said, “It wouldn’t have mattered.”
And you stared at me
with eyes
that looked so tired
of trying
to rebuild a rockslide.
— Clint Bowman
The catbird is pecking away
at two ripe tomatoes.
I wave my hands and shout,
My tomatoes! as though
I’d produced them
from my breasts or belly.
The catbird aerializes
on the tomato cage,
jabbing and jabbing the red fruit.
I have more on the counter
that I won’t eat before they rot,
or that I’ll give away.
It’s unseemly, this stinginess,
a memory of not-enough,
the necessity of preserving
a crop from rabbits and deer,
the otherwise marvelous
round-backed bugs, grasshoppers
flaring red underwings,
or birds like this one,
gray as a civil servant,
an actuary of ripeness,
that tilts its head to eye the fruit
and flaunts its rusty bottom
in salute.
— Valerie Nieman
The Opal Ring
When I was thirteen, my grandmother gave me an opal ring.
I like to wear it when I dress up to go out.
It is so delicate most people never notice it.
My grandmother whispered, It’s from some old beau.
I wear the ring, her memory, to feel magical.
Three small iridescent stones, a gold band worn thin.
Only when I asked did she whisper her secret.
Did you ever look deeply at the displays of color,
opaque stones holding quiet fire? The band’s worn thin.
The last time you betrayed me I slipped on the ring.
Iridescent means plays of color. So few truly look deeply.
She called me to her room, opened a sacred drawer.
This is the last time you betray me. I slip on the ring,
its blue-green, pink lights so delicate. You never noticed.
In her room, she handed me a velvet-lined box.
My grandmother gave me her opal ring. I was only thirteen.
—Debra Kaufman
The Fog
Some say strong winds and hard rain sing,
but I love the more subtle things:
stillness as mists make frost and dew,
the time between crickets and wren
before the cruel light crawls in
and work takes me away from you.
Drunk with sleep but almost aware
that we are more real than dreams,
but much less sure and far more rare.
Not cold silence, that’s too extreme
though the loudest leaves go quiet
as fog fills in what we forget.
The sun starts showing silhouettes.
Stalled clocks whisper: “Not yet. Not yet.”
— Paul Jones