Levi 501’s

One for the boys, one for the ladies,
he works at the mirror for hours
learning to sneer and smile
at the same time.  And thank god
for Levis with your hands in your pockets
and a road house drawl—
’cause every country boy can sing
out a half his mouth, and baby
every town has a two bit mason-dixon
where us country boys dangle lines
from the ends of our Marlboros
’til it’s back in the saddle again.

——————-

Grace Wilson Rouke (1911-1963)

In that kitchen with the cheap linoleum and chairs that didn’t match
she was still almost young—
a little harsh around the rouge and cigarettes, a look
I now see as from the war years.

The heart attack that dropped her to the floor was mercifully quick
and she disappeared from our lives.

But death is not a disappearing.  It is an arresting, a putting
away of the unresolved and never known—a gap
so dense it bends the light and the way we walk
long after we have forgotten the brand of the cigarettes,
the putting away—even the absence.

Tim Hunt’s collection, Fault Lines, is forthcoming from Backwaters Press.  His poems have appeared in Tar River, Epoch, Cut Bank, Alehouse, and other journals, and he has won the Chester H. Jones Prize.  Originally from northern California, he currently lives in Normal, Illinois, which is a place, not a state of being.

============

Amortization

When the glaciers bulldozed Vermont,
pushed our topsoil like so much snow
to form Cape Cod, Long Island,
we gave good farm land, and got
bare-assed ledges, hardscrabble
and Canadian rocks.

With water at eight pounds a gallon
and maple syrup at eleven,
there’s just over three pounds
of Vermont in every can,
filtered up through maple roots,
boiled down, graded, weighed,
gone south to Hartford or Boston.

Now, at sixty bucks a gallon
for Grade A Medium Amber,
we get twenty dollars a pound
for the dirt that heads south.   �
It seems they’re beginning to pay off
the mortgage on the Cape.

Roderick Bates was also in Issue #1 of Rat’s Ass Review.

===============

Circe

“She imagines herself and Odysseus
walking through a field in November,
licking melted snow from each other’s mouths,
stopping to examine the still unfrozen track of a deer”
From Margaret Atwood’s Circe/Mud Poems

Circe is secretly a child of winter.
She has always preferred the clarity of it
to the raspy dying breath of her humid island.
Each afternoon sleeping by her pigs’ muddy bath
she sweats and tosses in dreams
eyes sealed shut against the gnats
she lets herself think of snowforts and siege.
Drifting out of range of so much sadness and dust
she imagines herself and Odysseus.

He is teaching her to tie knots
but she keeps climbing to the eagle’s nest
because the salt air reminds her,
is cold and bitter
like frosty grass that they melted footprints into
feet coming away patterned white from sharp cattails and thistle barbs.
But mostly she recalls the shock of breathing
and his body beside her.
It can be difficult to remember
walking through a field in November.

Low clouds caught in the treetops
and Odysseus’ breath was lemongrass
cooling her skin and giving her goosebumps.
His hands too, like dry icicles
so smooth and cold
so she couldn’t concentrate on anything
not standing or speaking
all her heat finally released in shapes that spelled his name.
Without realizing it, they turn south
licking melted snow from each other’s mouths.

When Circe has all but burned away the field they move on.
So this is what love must be like.
The other’s voice floating over the prairie like a moon
you only have to turn your face to the sky
to realize that he is calling you.
“Circe, over here.”
He has fallen back and calls her near
stopping to examine the still unfrozen track of a deer.

Annik Adey-Babinski is a student at McGill University. She has previously been published in the Scrivener Creative Review.

===================

The Choteau County Trilogy

Choteau County

Remember when you were the
tallest thing in sight until the
sheriff of Choteau County
clanked out on our wracked,
warped, leaning porch and stepped
down with his carbine in one fist
and Tommy in the other?

Can I shoot the rifle? He looked
at my father and then at me.
Said, you see some big deer out
there or somethin’ worth shootin’?

I looked at Tommy. His head was
down to hide the tears. No cuffs
because you didn’t run from the sheriff.
No, but there might be something I
missed on the first look.
He walked over and stuck Tommy
into the Dodge on the shotgun side.

He said he believed there was a
big jackrabbit out there and silently
gave me the gun. See him? Right
where I’m pointing. So I held it up
and fired. The stock hit me in the
shoulder like a ball-peen hammer.
I wasn’t going to cry about anything.

Let’s go get him you said. Son, I think
you missed that ol’ boy. It was the
sheriff talking so I guessed he was
probably right. He shucked the shells
out and handed me the empty gun.
You keep this for me while your dad
and I go into town for awhile.
I’ll be back shortly to collect it. Keep it safe.
I don’t have any bullets. I know, he said.
But that don’t mean you might not see
more game out yonder. You have a pretty
big back yard. I’ll be back shortly, now.

He reached into his right trousers pocket
and pulled out a silver dollar then handed
it to me. Keep this for the movie of Saturday.
They let preacher’s kids in for free, though.
Well, just keep it anyway and don’t go
pointing that gun at anything that ain’t
between you and out yonder.

Then you were the tallest thing in sight
again .

 ———————————-

Sugarbush (Choteau County II)

There were times I’d sit out on the
back porch and look a thousand miles to the
Rockies, straight across Sugarbush like
it wasn’t even there.

I was a dumb kid and didn’t even notice
it until the sheriff came by one day and
decided to sit out there with me for a while.

Lookin’ back, that ol’ boy was pretty fuckin’
smart, although he’d have beat my ass if he
ever heard me cuss a lick.

This time he was here or there for me and
not my daddy. The Mennonites said I’d
raped one of their daughters.

I’d heard about it and halfway expected ol’
John, the same man took my Daddy away.
Looks to me like sheriffs never die, not even
fade away. They are just always there like

dust and the echo of a lonesome song, say
“Red River Valley.” And we sat there looking
out across the thousand mile back yard
toward the desert and all I could see was
tears, say I didn’t do nothing to Candace,
we were friends fer Chrissakes, John.

So he asked me what I could see between
the boards and the mountains and I said:
Shit, John, sand and sagebrush! what the
hell can you see? He says: “Sugarbush”
and spits a wad of RedMan into the sand.

Awright, where?

Well, it starts right there at your boots
and goes about as far as the tree-line on
them mountains, there. I don’t know if
it continues on beyond for sure.
I ain’t never been that far.

You can’t see worth shit can ya, Wendy?
No further than the day I took your daddy
to La Junta and left you with my rifle
to shoot rabbits in the Sugarbush.

No sir. I figured there must be a rabbit
out there somewhere though but
you didn’t leave me enough shells to hit one.

Laughed and says, It’s Sugarbush! You
either hit one or you don’t. I couldn’t
afford the shells to keep you occupied all day.
Besides, your daddy got ornery on me.

I’m going to walk down to the Mennonite’s.
You stay here at the house while I’m gone?
Promise?

Yes Sir. So he walked down the back alley
if it was that. To your right was the sorry little
town. To the left was the Rockies all that clear
distance far away. In between was something
I had never seen before the sheriff pointed
it out to me: Sugarbush.

I flat stared until he ambled back, kicking
rocks like a kid with those fine boots. Whatcha
lookin’ at, Wendy?

Don’t call me that John!
Awright, whatcha lookin’ at?
“Sugarbush.”
Yep I thought you’d see it.

The Mennonites don’t want no trouble.
Did you cause any trouble?

Candace and I went skinny-dipping in
the Hollister’s cattle tank. We didn’t do
nothing but that, I swear!

That’s what Candy said too. I been wastin’
my time on kids like you. ‘Course now
that you can see Sugarbush, I better
keep my eye out for ya.

Sheriff, come by again when you can,
willya? It gets dull out here with daddy
gone and momma in La Junta at that school.

Wendy, you are one of my regular stops
now that we can both see Sugarbush
from your back porch. That’s all there
is. And that’s all there was.

——————————–

 Suppers in Choteau County

They don’t matter so much to me
as once they did. Mama always
kissed me on the head and Papa
was a Preacher so he always said
grace.

One parsonage was pretty much
the same as another with sparse
standard deviation but somehow
we carted this huge round oak dining
table from one end of this heathen
fuckin’ nation to the other and then
back again.

Musta weighed a ton but the
Methodists always paid  the
freight and if they didn’t Tommy
would call up Bishop Phillips
to straighten it out.

The bishop had a way of persuading
people I didn’t understand but he
usually got the job done. He was my hero,
longside the Choteau County sheriff.

Those two ol’ boys were my heroes.
Saved my ass in a lot of ways I never
understood ‘til later but they never
told me why.

Each one sat with us at that supper
table by turns and intermittently.
The bishop taught me how to pray
and the sheriff taught me why.

In the long run, they died of course
but both of ‘em had made their points.

Now, I can’t pray and I can’t shoot
worth a damn but I pray to learn
to shoot and that I will never have to
and I shoot so as to distract myself
from the fact that I can’t sit down
to supper with ‘em anymore and pray.

Wendell M. Tomlin, Jr., 59, male Caucasian. I take myself pretty seriously, except when it is just too hard to keep a straight face while doing so.

================

The Girls in Steno, 1970

When it’s break time
the girls all walk together,
cigarette-protector cases
clasped between their index

tapers and their thumbs.
On each girl’s fingers glow
iridescent lacquers.
When break time nears,

they peek at each other,
twinkle, giggle, nod.
When break time comes,
a bell rings and the girls rise

like Lazarus. High on heels
they click in couples down the hall
to fill an elevator.
They get off at One. There

they float across the cafeteria,
men everywhere,
eyes everywhere.
(Is he the one?)

When a new girl’s hired
the old girls
put her to the test:
Will she join them

for the coffee break?
If she does, she joins them forever,
even after she marries,
retires or expires.

Donal Mahoney was also in Issue 1 of Rat’s Ass Review.

==================

Cruiser Weight

My neighbor’s been asking for this.�
The police cruiser pulls into

her driveway.  An officer
gets out and walks through

the snow to her front door.
Small arms dangle like dead fish

from his belt. He kicks his boots
around a bit, making a show of it,

and pulls the storm door open,
sweeping an arc of snow

off the stoop.  Without knocking,
he shuts it and returns

to his cruiser.  He kicks the snow
from his boots and sits down

behind the wheel, pulls away,
leaving tracks in the snow

like a Christmas card in the mailbox.�
This fantasy comes once a year,

bringing the fiction that someone
is always home, even when my

neighbor visits family in Indiana.�
It’s a favor between the like-minded,

written with words that flurry
like snowflakes, evidence that melts

on their tongues, their ears.�
It’s an intimacy only skin deep. 

Andrew Rihn is the author of several slim volumes of poetry, including the forthcoming chapbook Foreclosure Dogs (New Sins/Winged City
Press).  He has lived in one city his entire life, but thinks that could change any day now.  Track him down here. 

=====================

Moonwalk, July 1969

We had our own mission every month—
three and a half hours across the interstates,
the tolls, one beltway, and a long backroad.
We would arrive late Friday night
to parents waiting, table set,
kitchen steaming with dishes we’ve never
tasted since. Afterwards we’d sit
amid the questions, stories, up-to-dates,
nothing too long, nothing demanding silences,
the talk propelled along the sides
in minor arabesques. What did we know?
Our troubles curled like wisps of dust
under our feet, puffing just ankle high,
the jabber of small tongues turning us�
from the deep fissures of those days,
one small step between the Jersey scrub
and humid Philadelphia blocks,
the bright reflective faces changing
with each latitude but the arrivals just the same,
inevitable, unfeigned glows of bright interiors
we always knew. And even on the sullen
drives, the barren landscapes would dissolve
once we approached the journey’s close,
our motions stabilized, the spins surveyed,
deflected, and drawn out of us, then fixed
amid familiar furniture and family photographs.
And the moon, that adamant, steadily blazing
its sands, its powdery basins probed by alien gear—
was there ever such luminance, such perishable
light in that vast and ageless sky?

Askold Skalsky, a retired college professor from western Maryland, has had poems in numerous small press magazines and journals, most recently in freefall and The Dos Passos Review. He has also published in Canada, Ireland, and Great Britain. Earlier this year he received a prize for his poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council.