Hand me down dresser
Not antique or heirloom
it didn't have that kind of
gravitas. At best,
it can be called vintage
or retro. Still, the gold handles
and carved feet hint at
lost nobility. The bare spot
on top where the lacquer
rubbed away to bare wood,
the scratches in surface from
keys dropped there after work
and rings on top from drinks
sweating into the finish
show an item taken for granted
worn down by daily life.
Bought cheap by your grandparents
after the war for their
first born, given to your uncle
when he moved out, returned
to your parents when
he died young from too many
cigarettes and too much red meat,
and now down to you in your
first apartment. It floated
around the periphery of your life
for years, forgotten in
the basement where it held
towels, drop cloths, rags,
flashlights, batteries, winter clothes
during summer - the most utility
of cabinets, once a sign
of their good fortune,
and now your independence.
Open House at Your Childhood Home
Three decades later, it's all askew:
everything your family owned
given away after your mother passed.
The gray carpet with foot tracks
Worn into it, replaced by
hardwood with gaps between the planks.
They hid the forest green paint under
Off-white and gray as if the house
Was a thunder cloud or
A decommissioned battleship.
They kept the giant sink,
A few of the light fixtures,
The doors and hardware.
Original to the house the online ad
Tells you like it's a badge of authenticity
Proof something can survive here.
But you already know that. You were there
When your father installed them.
They weren't selling points then
and your parents felt proud
to have something nice that was theirs.
The realtor stands in the kitchen
where your mother used to
cook dinner and asks you to sign in
Like a common stranger.
She's more polished than your mother
ever was, nice suit, hair and makeup
done on a Sunday morning.
It’s all too much for this house,
All this company your parents
would have never hosted,
Organized by a woman your parents
Would have never trusted.
Birthday Card From the Mortgage Company
An agent I spoke to once a decade ago
sent me a video card of a cake
full of lit, multicolored candles and
a full smile on top to show
How happy I should be on this day,
But they use my first and last names
All over the card like they do for official
Correspondence: Happy birthday, Eric Carlson,
It’s your special day, Eric Carlson,
It’s time to party, Eric Carlson.
At this point, the company knows me well:
my income, credit rating, home value,
My height, weight, total value of my assets
The market forecast for my home's value,
Personal information made financial,
But that’s the job of an insurance company
That makes a point of knowing these things,
Collecting and stowing details away
In their long-term electronic memory
To be deployed on a day like my birthday.
When I was young my grandmother
Would spend a long time choosing
The funniest card she could go find
For each family member so they would laugh
Or at least smile in spite of themselves.
I imagine a room full of unsmiling
Men and women in gray and blue suits
Wearing pointy party hats and blowing into
noise makers so they pop out
Like vibrant rainbow colored
Snake tongues, singing a forced,
deadpan happy birthday.
I imagine my tiny grandmother her voice
booming across the board room
Handing cake squares to the assembled
Executives, cackling at their discomfort.
Laugh a little. It won't kill you.
Driving Home, 3:00A.M.
You don't have to drive too far out of the city
to find nothing. At this hour, people are sleeping
and the darkness swallows the car whole
when you're between exits. It's quite a thing
to overdrive your headlights in the middle of the night
and only have to worry about hitting a stray deer
that wanders into the highway. If you wanted
to freak yourself out, you could turn off the headlights
and disappear for good, a phantom flying
at 85 miles an hour. You could also pull over
turn your lights off and time how long it takes for
another person to pass, as if you could measure
your aloneness in units of time and speed and not
the more accurate language like lonely, ache, and
isolation that express how far you feel from anyone.
Keep driving and when you get toward home,
you'll be met with empty streets, traffic lights
directing cars that never pass, past street lights
like stage lights with no performer below. It's only
a few more minutes until you get home,
and you can't tell whether to be excited or bored
when you pull into the driveway. Take an extra minute
to sit in your darkened car with the heat
blowing in your face, waiting for a reason to enter.
Family Pictures in an Antique Shop
They’re hiding in the back of the store
stacked on the kitchen tables
worn and nicked from family gatherings
and years of late-night homework;
beside piles of pots, pans, silverware,
ceramic plates and bowls
around the CDs, cassettes, vinyl records, VHS tapes
DVDs and laserdiscs that can’t be played anymore;
and piles of seventy-year-old Time and Life magazines
with black and white images of smiling families
and frowning world leaders on their covers,
mixed in with paperbacks with broken spines and dogeared pages;
beside the chairs, hutches, corner cabinets
wire racks, stools, rolling islands
and an antique laundry press
with cracked rollers and a half-rusty washboard.
that once made a functional dining room.
They’re leaning at an angle in a yellow milk crate
in shades of black and white or sepia
the people all look tired and severe, their faces tight
with thick mustaches, three-piece suits
white dresses, and hair piled in heavy buns,
children sitting in chairs staring somewhere
behind the camera like small copies of their parents.
These are people unaccustomed to posing
for a camera or having their pictures taken. They are
uncomfortable, uptight, they sense the gravity
of taking this time to document their families,
creating these artifacts cleaned out of homes,
now lost in a sea of glass trinkets
marked as $1 each or 5 for $3.
Eric Carlson is a high school English teacher.
This is a debut.