Dirt is Soil
I lay down that thought with the last book I
was reading, just set them both and never
returned, amazing how much dust settles
into the thick of things, my slippers worn,
skull attempting to hold onto hair and
teeth. Is that why I am drawn to silent
films, the world then just as now, dependent
on music, all synopsis, drama in
the eyebrows? Two men sneak up to a house
and steal a chicken, whether here on this
screen or last night in Arizona, land
lost or denied, their children unaware
that even in the city by the tracks
dirt is soil, charitable, generous,
provident, nothing to be ashamed of.
Friend Request
He seems the same, even with the jowls,
for who doesn’t have either them by
now or the tight strings running down the
neck like a repressed harp! Move, I want
to say to his wife, he was mine once,
but she stays in the picture, trendy
hair cut, the frames of her glasses the
same color as her eyes. And his. I
see an old photo of them with their
children, leaping in the waves, holding
hands like a series family right
before credits splash. I could not love
him then, but I might now that I’ve lost
more teeth, cracked my back just by rolling
over, have replaced dignity with
the dole, which isn’t enough, will not
compare to all I created when
I was yet doing, now that who I
was has stopped and become still, little
left to do except for regretting.
Musician at the Reunion
Yes, I am writing about you. Don’t hide
or blush, rage or run, your story ours
without the outcome, the lesson all of
us eventually must learn. I don’t
mention the tucks or the ties, the
financial failures. Though they’re ours, not yours,
because you’ve never had
anything to lose, no one wants to
remember, would rather talk about how
you fell through the man hole back in
high school, crawled out for college, and
still, thirty years later, last week was the
best time of your life except for the
month before that. You’re in these lines
because you are happy while we are not,
having failed in that category or, more
likely, decided happiness is just a
miasma coming off a wetland like mist
off a bog. You don’t even have a lawn,
yet you present yourself, a violin in one
hand, bow in the other, head back in
song, the only who of us who’s free.
Rendezvous
But we didn’t get there on time, so we
missed the bus, stuck on that corner in the
middle of nowhere with the teen age girls
crawling in and out of Kenworths parked in
the dark, shouts and giggles, high-pitched squeals just
before the crying, the desert with its
late-rising moon up ahead. We started
walking after buying nine bottles of
water, hats, and sweaters with names of teams
we’d never heard of. I dropped the last of
our coins into a can for breast cancer.
The End of Summer
I brought the gong, and no one listened,
complained instead of the planes passing over
head and the poor reception, the quality of the water
and recycling restrictions. A blue-faced man
became red, the chicken swaggering
across the road to the other side. We
have been eating sandwiches for weeks, unable to bring
ourselves to cook or make it to the street,
so attuned to the attachments, in fact by now living
off them. I don’t care who follows me
or you as long as I know where you’ll be when going
out the door, one last glimpse
in real life to remember. Some of us leap
better than others, or perhaps we turn best
from left to the right, life a feast set for visitors
while we perform. Now, the table’s finished
and ready for dismantling, one grape
surviving in the bottom of the bowl.
Sandra Kolankiewicz’s poems have appeared widely, most recently in One, Otis Nebulae, Trampset, Concho River Review, London Magazine, New World Writing and Appalachian Heritage. Turning Inside Out was published by Black Lawrence. Finishing Line has released The Way You Will Go and Lost in Transition.
