My sincere gratitude to the editors and publishers who have featured my work in their publications. I appreciate your commitment to the literary community.
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Contents
(Publication credits cited at the end of each piece)
Long Gone And Never Coming Back
Passing The Last Buoy
Death’s Door
Factory
Good Help Is Hard To Find
Along Your Golden Coast
After Drinking At McSorley’s
The Way Back Home
Storm
In Summer
Driving Home at Midnight
Funky Little Blaze Orange Pork Pie Hat
Swimming in the Lagoon
Launching Pad
When I Die
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Long Gone And Never Coming Back
We roll on; twisting, winding, rumbling
through steep wooded hillsides
blanketed by two feet of freshly fallen snow.
Glimpses of the countryside through smeared windows
grainy images from a silent movie
slender trees reflected off the surface
of a rock riddled stream.
Except for the bongo rhythm of steel wheels
on clackety tracks, it’s mostly quiet.
Travelers in their own orbits
like distant planets in the cosmic dust of space
ears plugged
eyes gazing at illuminated screens
thumbs diddling text messages.
A soldier in fatigues, just back from deployment
tattoos on his knuckles, his face a mask
of sorrows and secrets.
A cell phone rings
the woman in the seat behind me
screams hysterically in Spanish.
The conductor makes a garbled announcement
two priests in the row in front of me
take their bags and move up the aisle
ready to get off at the next stop.
On the outskirts of an old industrial town as night falls
we lumber past scrapyards and smokestacks
piles of red brick lie half submerged in the bend of the river
a slag heap in a field near an abandoned smelting furnace
muddy vacant lots, broken glass and beer cans in puddles
derelict factory buildings and tumbledown warehouses
rusty, crumbling, desolate
long gone and never coming back.
(Published in Literary Orphans)
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Passing The Last Buoy
It’s a short life, and it gets shorter as we get older
standing on the breakwater
immense granite blocks stacked tightly together
form an impenetrable barrier
against tides and time.
In the shelter of the harbor, sailboats bob gently on their moorings
to the other side, lies open sea.
Indian Summer warm sun, blue sky, sparkling water
a gull sits on a piling
watching a man and a boy fish from the rocks
It’s a short life, over before you know it
seems we never really slow down to be fully present in the moment
the gull sits perfectly still, watching
waiting for his moment to swoop in for a chunk of bait
maybe steal the whole damn fish.
I’m stunned you’re gone, here one moment,
vanished the next, leaving only profound stillness
in all the spaces you used to be
a trawler passes the port buoy, the last buoy
bound for open water and the fishing grounds
Look at this light
have you ever seen such golden and dazzling light?
it has such a unique quality in mid Autumn
so ephemeral this late in the game
no two-minute warning, time out or final buzzer,
nobody shouting All aboard! or Last call!
no checkered flag, termination notice, or summit marker
no musical score to signal the denouement before the curtain falls
no clanging bell, no real way to know
you’re passing the last buoy.
(Published in Bay Laurel Online)
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Death’s Door
We climb the spiral staircase
to the top of the old tower
across leaden water, bristling with whitecaps
views sweep to the horizon in every direction
thunderous waves pound jagged boulders
on Death’s Door.
My mother
tells the story
a battle between two tribes
canoes capsized in the surf
warriors drowned in the maelstrom
their bodies dashed against the rocks.
Sighing wind and roaring surf swell to a furious din
the big lake surges as far as we can see
we turn for the stairs
the way back down
impossibly steep
the descent ominous.
(Published in Wilderness House Review)
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Factory
The floor, an encrusted blanket of filth and grit
metal shavings, cleaning compound, machine oil and grease.
Contraptions knockety-knocking, rocker arms clacking, pulleys creaking
gears groaning, chains clanging, all moving at different times and cadences.
Men shout over the cataclysm their voices
choked down to ghostly echoes in the thunderous din.
An unexpected shower of sparks from a spot welder erupts
like of a rainbow of shooting stars on a hot summer night
Monstrous machines press and shear, cut and bend
twist and punch steel into a variety of pieces and shapes.
Visions of green grass and cool breezes rise up and float away
like a helium balloon off its tether on a lazy spring afternoon.
Exhaust spews from forklifts and welding rigs
the leaden bouquet of sweat and despair
A buzzer sounds with earsplitting fury marks the beginning
and the end of all shifts and breaks.
At quitting time we stand around, waiting
for the deafening clamor of that buzz saw signal
We punch out, jockeying for position,
throwing elbows like roller derby players on the first turn
It’s every man for himself
as we claw our way out the door.
(Published in Ibbetson Street Review)
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Good Help Is Hard To Find
Nobody embodies
the cowboy-outlaw biker
more than the ironworkers
notorious tweakers
wired on Black Beauties
they sell on breaks
bulldozers rumble over loose soil
kicking up dust, spewing exhaust.
machinery clanks in pandemonium
heavy metal
blasts from a boom box, overpowering
the machine gun roar of jackhammers
the ironworkers sing along
at the top of their lungs
as they climb the latticework
Dave leans on his shovel
staring in disbelief
at the pink slip in his hand.
(Published in The Santa Fe Literary Review)
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Along Your Golden Coast
You rake your fingers through my life, leaving smoke trails of memory that flicker like images in an old movie. I wandered your vagabond trail, followed the twist and wind of your serpentine spine and shuddering fault line;
peered down from cliffs at the sea ravaging the jagged shore below, slept on your beach shrouded in mist, strewn with eel grass stranded by the ebb tide, listened to the song of sea lions, basking on boulders black as obsidian in the pale morning sun, sailed around your terrible demon-hold, that solitary rock with no escape, felt the roll and pitch of the boat under your red bridge;
surrendered to your veil of fog as it engulfed everything, watched tugboats push cargo ships through the deep channel between Land’s End and the Marin headlands, where low throated foghorns warn vessels away from shipwreck graveyard shoals at the hungry mouth of your Gate;
lay on my back in your redwood forest, gazing, starry-eyed, into the leafy upper branches of the canopy, while all around, tree trunks stood like columns in a hushed cathedral, sentinels standing guard, bearing witness to the passage of time.
(Published in Exquisite Duet, JMWW)
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After Drinking At McSorley’s
I lean against the bar, drinking
small tankards of dark and light ale
staring in wonder
at the dust encrusted filament
strung from one end of the room
to the other
crammed with desiccated wishbones
each one left there by a World War I doughboy
who shipped out to fight in the Great War
each promised to retrieve his wishbone
when he came back safe and sound,
but never returned.
I leave the bar and head for the subway
descending the stairs to the landing
I hear accordion music and a woman
singing songs in French
I look down upon her from above
she’s dressed in a white gown, tiara and angel wings
playing a white, pearlite accordion and singing
songs of Edith Piaf, the French chanteuse
while all around her
glassy-eyed stoners sit moonfaced
wide eyed and smitten
throwing dollars at her feet.
(Published in Camroc Press Review)
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The Way Back Home
500 miles, all the way from Omaha
9 hours in the back of a flatbed truck
on the way back home.
Hot wind buffets our faces, thrashes our bodies,
ties our hair into knots, sucks the air from our lungs
carries our voices away.
We roll on past fields of wheat and corn,
soy and hay, the endless midwest landscape
swallowed up by prairie and sky.
A spool unreeling, a banner unfurling,
time and space unwinding
we play chess on a tiny magnetic board
until, about six hours out
somewhere just past Des Moines
you call checkmate.
(Published in The Thunderclap Poetry Anthology)
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Storm
The storm took all day to get here. Humidity hung like a sodden, warm blanket. It dominated and suppressed all motion. With no breeze or birdsong trees stood silent & still. The sky was sullen under the ominous growl of thunder that rumbled from somewhere way up the other side of the lake.
The dogs sensed it before I heard it. Wispy clouds of white lace,
the leading edge of the storm, ran before a bruised and purple sky. Air electric with ozone. Wind rose up and rain came down in great gushing sheets. Surging torrents spattered through open windows, soaking tile floors and wooden sills.
A freight train lumbered by in the middle of it all, a ghost ship on high seas. Wind and rain flattened the hydrangeas and snapped the main stems of the tomato plants.
I wander alone through the darkened house closing windows and mopping up puddles. Sad about the tomato plants and thinking about things I did not do.
The world has ended and this is all there is.
(Published in Lost In Thought)
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In Summer
Towering clouds
remind me of that summer.
Endless days,
incandescent heat and humidity
like a warm, wet blanket.
Crows flying,
colossal skies overhanging
relentless rows of corn.
The frenzied cacophony
of crickets at twilight.
Sheet lightning,
stuttering bursts
flash across thunderheads
piled up in a heap
on the purple horizon.
In the pale, blue dusk,
my brother and I chase fireflies
and keep them in our darkened bedroom.
Lightning in a bottle, trapped in a jar
with holes poked through the lid.
Tornado warning,
the night air, still and heavy
nearly bursting, bristling
with electric apprehension.
The fire hall siren wails.
My parents
on the front porch, in the dark
smoking cigarettes, talking quietly
about the polio epidemic and a girl
in an iron lung.
(Published in The Wilderness House Review)
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Driving Home at Midnight
Driving home at midnight, on a night so dark, so wild,
headlights bounce off the wall of darkness.
Moon and stars peek out through storm clouds,
a black hole in the dead of night swallows all light back into itself.
The same late night DJ on two different stations, a millisecond apart
spins dense, bone grinding death metal that pulses from the speakers.
Through static and white noise, I twirl the dial between stations,
pretending to control the flow of time.
Driving home at midnight on a night so dark, so wild,
I listen to jazz trio recorded live in a club
more than fifty years ago, somewhere in America.
The music is all trance rhythms, thunderous bass and drums,
strident horn in double harmonic, Byzantine scale.
I imagine a man playing a horn in an open-air market
eyes closed, cheeks puffed out, as he charms
a dancing cobra out of a basket.
In another life I ride a sway-backed horse
on a curvy, tree-lined path,
clods of earth kicked up by hooves,
frock coat whipping in the wind.
I’m lashed to the wheel
of a creaking, wooden ship
on storm driven waters
running hard before a gale.
Driving home at midnight, on a night so dark, so wild,
lightning flashes and bleaches the landscape
in stark black on white. Tree branches sway in delirium.
Time spins and tumbles through a howling void.
Driving home at midnight, I’m the only traveler on the road,
a voyager in deep space, the last man on earth
listening to jazz on the radio
in the dark.
Published in The Ibbetson Street Review)
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Funky Little Blaze Orange Pork Pie Hat
I drive into town daydreaming
about the dream I had last night
not the one about my father
but the one where I design
a line of men’s wear
made exclusively from potato skins
with snappy names
like Dudz from Spudz, Potato Pants and Tater Tees.
I pass fluttery paper cornstalks
vineyards rusting under sullen skies
pickup trucks clustered at trail heads
men with shotguns
creeping toward corn fields.
Walt Whitman’s redneck body double
is in the diner, at the counter
writing on a napkin
could be a shopping list
directions to his hunting camp
or a new collection of radiant poems.
Seems like
I’m the only one in the place
not dressed in green and beige camo
and a funky little blaze orange pork pie hat.
Where are the Fashion Police when you need them?
A man and a teenage girl stand at the counter
hands covered with blood
the girl shows off a photo
she just shot with her phone
of the buck
she just shot with her gun.
Walt Whitman says:
That’s a big deer sweetheart!
How old are you anyway?
She gets up to wash her hands.
15, but my dad let’s me drive his pickup.
At the grocery store, in the produce department
I spot a man squeezing bananas.
With his meticulously groomed
white goatee and wire rimmed glasses
he’s a dead ringer for Sigmund Freud
I want to tell him
about the dream I had last night.
Not the one about my father
but the one about Henrietta
swimming through a sea of roses.
Doctor, would you mind
if I lie down on your couch
over here by the tomatoes
for just a few minutes?
I’d like to tell you about my mother.
( Published in Metazen)
Winner of Flashmob 2013 International Flash Fiction Contest
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Swimming in the Lagoon
Sometimes we can’t swim at the beach.
Thousands of them have died
the surface of the water, clogged
with bodies bobbing and floating.
Alewives, little fish in the herring family,
piled up at the high water line,
all washed up on the sandy beach
and the rocks along the shore.
Great heaping mounds of them,
iridescent dunes, bodies stinking
desiccated, covered with flies,
brittle, crackly, rotting in the sun.
The only place to swim
is the lagoon
where Shivering Sands Creek
flows into Lake Michigan
Placid water, warm as a bath,
sandy bottom, soothing underfoot.
I plunge straight up to my waist
in sticky quicksand crawling with leeches.
Claw my way out, fast as I can move,
scrambling out of the creek, squirming
with the heebie-jeebies, crying for Mom
to pull the slimy bloodsuckers off my legs
Then it’s right back in the water.
Seems worth the risk
just to be able
to go swimming.
(Published in Orion Headless)
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Launching Pad
Standing silently
by the side of the bed
you died in.
So strange to see it empty
so glad you’re no longer there.
We recited Kaddish after you’d gone.
So many others died in this bed
leaving no lingering energy,
residual angst or pain, struggle or strain.
No more than you might find
in any doorway
that thousands pass through on any given day.
Mattress covered with soft foam, Cowboy & Indian sheets,
this bed seems bland and ordinary,
a piece of institutional furniture.
But it’s more than that.
It’s the vehicle
that carried you over.
Your ferry across the River Styx,
burial ship, stargate, merkabah,
launching pad.
Tomorrow they’ll take it away.
It’s needed elsewhere
for somebody else’s journey.
(Published in the Uno Kudo Anthology)
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When I Die
When I die
have me stuffed and mounted
over the mantel of your fireplace
next to that portrait you like so much.
You know the one…
that shot of Ernest Hemingway
standing next to an 8 foot marlin
glistening in the sun.
Hang my body
as a scarecrow in your flower garden
stuck between the dogwoods and delphiniums,
dressed in safari jacket and pith helmet
raggedy limbs
swinging in the breeze.
Use me as a weathervane
tethered to a lightening rod
spinning in the wind
Put my ashes in a gilded box
on the mantel of your fireplace
under that photograph you like so much.
You know the one…
that shot of the old man and the sea
next to an 8 foot marlin
glistening in the sun.
When I die
use my bones as bookends, or have my portrait mounted
over the mantel of your fireplace next to that other one
you’re so fond of.
You know the one…
(Published in Red Fez )
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Your Own Back Yard - Michael Gillan Maxwell 