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| from a hard line |
| by lee gooden |
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From A Hard Line
While grocery shopping,
that great American equalizer,
I saw your sister the other day for the
first time in five or six years I suppose.
Her cart was full and mine was empty.
“Hey,” I said, her name escaped me.
“Hi,” she said right back. I think she forgot my
name too.
We made small talk, skirting and skating
around the subject we really wanted
to discuss.
She told me about your nephew,
her son, the boy you and I used to
take to the playground.
He’s been married for awhile
and he sells cars for a
dealership somewhere.
I filled her in about my daughters.
She didn’t know that I have a third girl.
She’s five years old and burns through time.
You probably don’t know about her either.
Now you are both informed.
I asked her if she still lived on the same street.
“Twenty years at the same address,” she replied.
I told her I was living at the same place too.
When I told her my eldest had started college in the fall
Her smile faltered
And almost slid backwards,
the way the hour hand
on the big round clocks back in school,
dropped down an instant into an increment
of the past, as if hesitant, reluctant to go on
and then clicked forward to the unknown.
I didn’t ask her the questions I wanted to ask.
She didn’t volunteer the information.
Although they itched at me and prodded
me to inquire
I let the moment go
and retained the gravity of a daily routine.
We said good-bye, she went down aisle two
and I headed to the produce, radishes were on sale.
I had a coupon for baby carrots,
a buck fifty off the organics, and that is important.
Hunched over the cart I suddenly felt very old,
and very tired.
The lights were crushing me, my chest, iron panic
and the music from the speakers in the ceiling
played a Taly Hall song, something about an
obsession with the Olsen Twins.
I forced myself to stand and made myself breathe.
I regained my strength and restored myself to normal polarity.
Able to equally distribute my weight,
I pushed my cart to the check-out line
and could bear the heaviness of you.
Through a Wine Bottle Darkly
The first hangover in seven years
is the renewal of old acquaintances
or the meeting of new enemies.
Either way, all those things that matter,
time,
energy,
money,
family,
love,
work,
routine,
the muse,
common sense,
wisdom,
health,
autonomy
and sanity
is infringed upon.
Afterwards, intoxication’s hornets
and those bees of inspiration
buzz, buzz, buzz, away because
the conversation dries into
empty
mud
husks
from
the
bubbly
bodacious
tingles
that
had
titillated
the
brain
before they injected,
interjected, injured and interred
their poisons and venom
and flew off for new territories to
torment
another
looking
to
hide
and
be
noticed
through
the
thick
myopia
of
wine bottle glasses.
Equal Monsters
He would cross his bare feet
at the ankle as they rested on the hassock
and he jiggled the ice in his glass,
a signal, an imperative for somebody
to refill his drink and change the channel.
The cubes clanked and clinked like cold coins
and made a music filled with undertones,
that might have been prophetic.
He exuded pomposity, sitting there
in his briefs, no shirt, no hat and
hair greased back in an Elvis duck tail,
while the sun poured through the window
bathing him as he were a bronze god
that swung from vine to vine.
She couldn’t get enough of him.
Although, she had more than enough of him,
she had put out willingly, while
putting up with way too much.
He never gave in and she never gave up
even when he was eager to quit,
to punch out the day and pound ends
to meet and force himself onto the night,
she offered him a hand and herself as a target.
Words were thrown and they shattered,
edgy and pointed, concise pieces of letters
like broken dishes underfoot that cut
and cast iron pans that bashed and bruised.
The scabs were picked, blood was bled,
bones were set so limbs would mend.
No negotiations, no compromises
They tried to dominate each other.
His physicality turned her on and intimidated.
Her intellect and insight angered him,
and made him feel less than a man,
incompatible in every way,
except in the bedroom
where they were equal monsters.
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