Visiting the Source of Self-consciousness
by Jonathan Eastman
The street name
not important
or the number
but the lie
the angle down
from Hawthorn School
perpendicular to it
and the past
gently sloping
to a now powder blue
once rust red
house I find after forty years
flakes of childhood
still on the jutting
side-door threshold
and down by the foundation
a scarf of brown leaves
wreathing window wells
where the snapping turtle
like a dark roadside hubcap
surprised me when a hooked head
craned
to size me up and glare
before I alerted the neighborhood
kept a shovel handle’s length
from its tank-like redoubt
until the mailman
slid it in a paperboy’s bag
for soup he said
while I stood and sucked
rock candy the man next door
brought from “out West”
then returned to the backyard
so jarring to rediscover
the little covered patio off the garage
and the sudden terrace mid-yard
dropping to a lower swath
and to the now innocuous then dangerous
ditch
Dad worked to make safe for us
and King’s run where once he howled
with a clothespin on his balls
my brother thought would be fun
and my range where I shot plastic rockets
pumped full of pressure and water
to launch quick blue-green dreams
that coursed my mind’s eye’s sky
like pyrotechnics in Alakazam the Great
and backyard barbeque briquettes
glowing in an orange pyramid
like the ash-end of my first cigarette
until I gagged at the bottom of a long stupid
drag--
I walked back to the hill too
finding the corrugated drainage pipe
where I peered peacefully in
until a swung huge rock
pendulum-like
so near the opening
hit the edge
and gouged a deep hole in my right thumb
just below the nail
and on another solemn day
a thin frisbee of metal
a tin can top hurled
by one of the boys up
there
miraculously all the way down
thunked into the side of my head
the scar still stippled in my temple
forty years later
I retrace my tender steps
up Chapel Hill
the broad top beckoning as before
and betokening the old threat
of the gang of tough farm boys
who might return as grown men to taunt me
under the shadowy tree line by the barbed wire fence
separating the temple-like top
from the purpled clover fields
where a little girl showed her vagina
so sweetly for inspection—so that’s
what they have under underpants!
we gawked then walked back down the grassy slope
I once flew down on toboggan
with my glee congealing into horror
as we sped toward the slatted snow fence
and burst through like a fist
tearing all our innocence
all our dry kids’ winter skin in a blitz
of wood and wire
and with blood and spittle running
back down to the neighborhood in tears
to try Hawthorn’s gentler rise
toward my school through second grade
pausing at the steep yard of the kid
who took my snowball in his ass
before turning and taking Randy’s in his face
why do boys so love surprise attack?
oh to laugh that long and hard
again!
but leave such a memory so intact
and go on across the street
where prints of my muddy hands
decorated the side of Moker’s garage
and Mom took me with tub and old towels
to wash every whorl away
before moping home
where one rainy day and somehow
incurring her anger—“the Vibrator!” we coined her
while I stood naked in the tub
taking stroke after stroke
of a yardstick she whipped
again on the day I had done so well on Tests
pure random luck so much so
they called to notify
of something so irregular some
mistake
that a boy all knew
could barely read and peed his pants
could score so high
can't get away with it
redhead, freckleface, bedwetter
they wouldn't let me be
oblivious
like a blister of thought
burst and gotten on their clean
records or a wall of obtuseness
had broken like a hernia and let through
an inundation of unearned understanding
raw imagination
that trumped inhibition
and innocence and fear
and left crying shame for no known
reason
not from pain
not for lack of love but locus of control
burning yearning to embrace
initiation, the individuation in striking out
on adventure outside this neighborhood
on the Canadian fishing trip
that brother and father would leave for in the morning
without me
leaving me to stand in Hammels' garage as thunder
rumbled in the dusk and a little black and white
TV seduced everyone back into the Twilight
Zone
that theme song I could now
turn from
to return to a new neighborhood expanding
beyond my father's unbuckling belt and mother's vibrating scream
that no one knew I'd found.
by Jonathan Eastman
The street name
not important
or the number
but the lie
the angle down
from Hawthorn School
perpendicular to it
and the past
gently sloping
to a now powder blue
once rust red
house I find after forty years
flakes of childhood
still on the jutting
side-door threshold
and down by the foundation
a scarf of brown leaves
wreathing window wells
where the snapping turtle
like a dark roadside hubcap
surprised me when a hooked head
craned
to size me up and glare
before I alerted the neighborhood
kept a shovel handle’s length
from its tank-like redoubt
until the mailman
slid it in a paperboy’s bag
for soup he said
while I stood and sucked
rock candy the man next door
brought from “out West”
then returned to the backyard
so jarring to rediscover
the little covered patio off the garage
and the sudden terrace mid-yard
dropping to a lower swath
and to the now innocuous then dangerous
ditch
Dad worked to make safe for us
and King’s run where once he howled
with a clothespin on his balls
my brother thought would be fun
and my range where I shot plastic rockets
pumped full of pressure and water
to launch quick blue-green dreams
that coursed my mind’s eye’s sky
like pyrotechnics in Alakazam the Great
and backyard barbeque briquettes
glowing in an orange pyramid
like the ash-end of my first cigarette
until I gagged at the bottom of a long stupid
drag--
I walked back to the hill too
finding the corrugated drainage pipe
where I peered peacefully in
until a swung huge rock
pendulum-like
so near the opening
hit the edge
and gouged a deep hole in my right thumb
just below the nail
and on another solemn day
a thin frisbee of metal
a tin can top hurled
by one of the boys up
there
miraculously all the way down
thunked into the side of my head
the scar still stippled in my temple
forty years later
I retrace my tender steps
up Chapel Hill
the broad top beckoning as before
and betokening the old threat
of the gang of tough farm boys
who might return as grown men to taunt me
under the shadowy tree line by the barbed wire fence
separating the temple-like top
from the purpled clover fields
where a little girl showed her vagina
so sweetly for inspection—so that’s
what they have under underpants!
we gawked then walked back down the grassy slope
I once flew down on toboggan
with my glee congealing into horror
as we sped toward the slatted snow fence
and burst through like a fist
tearing all our innocence
all our dry kids’ winter skin in a blitz
of wood and wire
and with blood and spittle running
back down to the neighborhood in tears
to try Hawthorn’s gentler rise
toward my school through second grade
pausing at the steep yard of the kid
who took my snowball in his ass
before turning and taking Randy’s in his face
why do boys so love surprise attack?
oh to laugh that long and hard
again!
but leave such a memory so intact
and go on across the street
where prints of my muddy hands
decorated the side of Moker’s garage
and Mom took me with tub and old towels
to wash every whorl away
before moping home
where one rainy day and somehow
incurring her anger—“the Vibrator!” we coined her
while I stood naked in the tub
taking stroke after stroke
of a yardstick she whipped
again on the day I had done so well on Tests
pure random luck so much so
they called to notify
of something so irregular some
mistake
that a boy all knew
could barely read and peed his pants
could score so high
can't get away with it
redhead, freckleface, bedwetter
they wouldn't let me be
oblivious
like a blister of thought
burst and gotten on their clean
records or a wall of obtuseness
had broken like a hernia and let through
an inundation of unearned understanding
raw imagination
that trumped inhibition
and innocence and fear
and left crying shame for no known
reason
not from pain
not for lack of love but locus of control
burning yearning to embrace
initiation, the individuation in striking out
on adventure outside this neighborhood
on the Canadian fishing trip
that brother and father would leave for in the morning
without me
leaving me to stand in Hammels' garage as thunder
rumbled in the dusk and a little black and white
TV seduced everyone back into the Twilight
Zone
that theme song I could now
turn from
to return to a new neighborhood expanding
beyond my father's unbuckling belt and mother's vibrating scream
that no one knew I'd found.
Winter Walk
by Jonathan Eastman
The frosty twisting of the vines
in tangled wire held up in lines--
rows of tortuous souls like mine
at rest awhile from sun and time.
Stakes and twigs and long dead brush--
gray, soft pink, and darkest brown--
slaughtered town encased in hush,
rotten flesh in eiderdown.
I walk a row with head bent low
to broken earth that gives under, slow
and lets my feet and thoughts resow
what scattered seeds refused to grow.
Faces I have half surrendered
hang like broken webs across the vineyard
and few of those I dear remember
promise new days, mean and tender.
by Jonathan Eastman
The frosty twisting of the vines
in tangled wire held up in lines--
rows of tortuous souls like mine
at rest awhile from sun and time.
Stakes and twigs and long dead brush--
gray, soft pink, and darkest brown--
slaughtered town encased in hush,
rotten flesh in eiderdown.
I walk a row with head bent low
to broken earth that gives under, slow
and lets my feet and thoughts resow
what scattered seeds refused to grow.
Faces I have half surrendered
hang like broken webs across the vineyard
and few of those I dear remember
promise new days, mean and tender.
HALLOWEEN
REVISITED by Jonathan Eastman
They don identities worn inside
out green frowns brown
grimaces silver indifference
sequestered now allowed
through little doors adored
by us smug but envious
of their innocent
evilization
letting go too far
from us
from selves we
have sewn in them
and steering them stoop to stoop
we guard them
from the impersonal night
where once
we too plunged through
the neighborhood of double vision
and sudden clothes lines and broke
promises to parents as
distant as the cold
breast of moon
rolling from a blouse of g a u z y c l o u d s
we turned
invidious eyes
on monsters we became
brief bright
bones floating
over dark streets
wild smiles
blazing from heads empty
of love
but part of e v e r y t h i n g
and not afraid
returning regretfully
only
when glutted with sweet tricking
of ourselves
reentering our soft sensitive skin
on cleft hooves
that stepped painfully
into eyes widening like a mother's in childbirth
Published in Midwest Literary Magazine, "Garden Nettles" July 2012
REVISITED by Jonathan Eastman
They don identities worn inside
out green frowns brown
grimaces silver indifference
sequestered now allowed
through little doors adored
by us smug but envious
of their innocent
evilization
letting go too far
from us
from selves we
have sewn in them
and steering them stoop to stoop
we guard them
from the impersonal night
where once
we too plunged through
the neighborhood of double vision
and sudden clothes lines and broke
promises to parents as
distant as the cold
breast of moon
rolling from a blouse of g a u z y c l o u d s
we turned
invidious eyes
on monsters we became
brief bright
bones floating
over dark streets
wild smiles
blazing from heads empty
of love
but part of e v e r y t h i n g
and not afraid
returning regretfully
only
when glutted with sweet tricking
of ourselves
reentering our soft sensitive skin
on cleft hooves
that stepped painfully
into eyes widening like a mother's in childbirth
Published in Midwest Literary Magazine, "Garden Nettles" July 2012
In
Memory of Grandma Kolbach
by Jonathan Eastman
She stirred the soup with secret herbs
And a quiet sigh near a fine blue
noon
And slyly lured us--
Foolish, buzzing boys behind
her,
Holding her stories but
forgetting,
As one forgets the name of a stranger
he wants suddenly to
love.
She poured exquisite Elbling, vin de la
Mosselle
That lit crystal stems of
memory--
Jean Pierre’s sparkling eyes in a cavern
cabaret;
The echoes of her scream when they took
him;
His shiny scalp’s dent gouged just
for
meanness
by an SS prison guard--
How he described the plunging
broken bottle
as if an evil shard of moon had
fallen
through his soft,
waxen
fingers,
raised in another moment to caress her
cheek.
Her wide smile and low, mellow
chuckle
Invited teenage talk and
taking
more—“Come on Jonny, have a little
more”
and with Tolkeinesque delight we
did
like high elves
around Elrond’s
table,
dropping dollops of heavy cream
and
salami
into the hot green broth and
swirling
to satisfaction, imagining Gandalf blowing
smoke rings
And though already rich, her feast fit for princes
hit
its crescendo with dessert she brought in like
crowns
encrusted with jewels—the legendary Dam
Blanche!
Sated, we retired to the smoking room, then
out
incredibly high, staggering over
cobblestone
her husband’s blood once
circumvented,
following him—Jean Pierre
Kolbach--
on his daily walk through what to us was
his
Enchanted City—down Avenue du X
Septembre
along L’Alzette, by L’Eglise St. Michel,
over Le Pont Adolphe and under Luxembourg into
the Cassemettes
where we strained to hear ghost picks
striking
rock that sheltered the Underground from the
Nazis.
But we were too numb to feel pain that
everywhere was plain to him,
jolting bone, chafing
flesh,
more adamant than any drunken boy’s
dread.
He bought us beers with friends Bean and Mole
and we returned to her
silly
as the Three Stooges—Bofferdink,
Henri Funck and Diekirch—laughing with her to
tears
Then collapsing into down-filled comforters until
late
afternoon when we would rise and indulge again
in her next onslaught of grandmotherly
hospitality.
Mykonos by Jonathan Eastman
Sunrise, and the blood of rock
flames on the far ridge. Our stones
hover in wind above the cove,
the giant Greek sun daring them:
come closer. Even this far away
it reaches to our fevered limbs
like a silent mad eye; we are glad
to surrender, to be young
and naked in its golden heat.
You are in front of me, more slender
than I have known you. Laughing crazy,
we come down like spiders,
to shady holes on the face of the cliff.
The bright space, the colors
below the water like soft gems, are why
we are here suspended on the edge, why
we will fall here, far from home,
among smooth rocks glistening in the cove.
flames on the far ridge. Our stones
hover in wind above the cove,
the giant Greek sun daring them:
come closer. Even this far away
it reaches to our fevered limbs
like a silent mad eye; we are glad
to surrender, to be young
and naked in its golden heat.
You are in front of me, more slender
than I have known you. Laughing crazy,
we come down like spiders,
to shady holes on the face of the cliff.
The bright space, the colors
below the water like soft gems, are why
we are here suspended on the edge, why
we will fall here, far from home,
among smooth rocks glistening in the cove.
Published in WHERE WE ARE: The Montana Poets Anthology, SmokeRoot Press, 1978.
Flushing Gophers in a Field Near Maynard, Iowa
by Jonathan Eastman
We gripped old Louisville Sluggers
and waited in a circle while the earth
clucked cool water down burrows Merle said
could snap the shank of a heifer.
A white sun we couldn't look at
lowed at the edge of his fields.
His cattle stood motionless
or slept in the shadowed creek bottom.
Gathering his crotch and shaking
it, he said be goddamn ready now--
we froze,
the first one flushed beelining out
and away, the hardest target we'd ever
known to kill, to crack the toy skull
exactly, or miss and chase zig-
zag over broken ground, sight broken
by too much rushing blood, sling of sweat,
and slanting sun. We learned to savor the strength
it took to lug each milk can, full
of drowning water, full to the edge of each
burrow and heft the slow stream up, swearing
we never had such a time.
When we stopped, dust glided down around us
like loose hair falling from a barber's chair.
We caught breath while Merle told how
a power take-off had grabbed his pant leg
and fed his foot to the big sickle--he
wouldn't let us look at him sorry.
He liked to watch us though,
a circle of boys swearing, like thirsty men
waiting to draw water from a well.
In our faces he saw his own, bound to something
in each burrow, each small framed darkness
where a smaller face appeared, broke upward,
holding the tiny sickles of its claws
like a shield before its desperate eyes.
and waited in a circle while the earth
clucked cool water down burrows Merle said
could snap the shank of a heifer.
A white sun we couldn't look at
lowed at the edge of his fields.
His cattle stood motionless
or slept in the shadowed creek bottom.
Gathering his crotch and shaking
it, he said be goddamn ready now--
we froze,
the first one flushed beelining out
and away, the hardest target we'd ever
known to kill, to crack the toy skull
exactly, or miss and chase zig-
zag over broken ground, sight broken
by too much rushing blood, sling of sweat,
and slanting sun. We learned to savor the strength
it took to lug each milk can, full
of drowning water, full to the edge of each
burrow and heft the slow stream up, swearing
we never had such a time.
When we stopped, dust glided down around us
like loose hair falling from a barber's chair.
We caught breath while Merle told how
a power take-off had grabbed his pant leg
and fed his foot to the big sickle--he
wouldn't let us look at him sorry.
He liked to watch us though,
a circle of boys swearing, like thirsty men
waiting to draw water from a well.
In our faces he saw his own, bound to something
in each burrow, each small framed darkness
where a smaller face appeared, broke upward,
holding the tiny sickles of its claws
like a shield before its desperate eyes.
Marina at Grand Lake
by Jonathan Eastman
The first hard light collects
in low clouds.
Gusts come off the lake
tunneling into dark pines,
along the root of each mountain
a shadow lifting toward the peak.
In this hollow where morning
is all mist and cold air
I walk to the dock,
listen for the voices
of strained boards coming apart.
I imagine what the day is like
for vacationers waking in the city,
loading their station wagons with gear,
children already arguing about seats
on cruisers they know are waiting.
I have come for the same reason
but from farther away,
the Midwest,
where just the word Colorado
is enough to make you wonder.
But life here is the same.
Like everyone I work,
I spend hours crouched on the beach
tugging long rusted cables
to secure the docks.
I am tired early,
guilty of slowing down,
as colors deepen and the sun
breaks over a ridge into my eyes.
Drunks, drowning in their eyes,
ask me where the fishing is good.
I fill their tanks
and tell them by the dam.
I'm not sure.
Late afternoon,
the water blackens.
All the fishermen come in at once
driven by whitecaps and cold rain.
I clean bait, cigarette butts, cans,
out of small rental boats
banging in their stalls like stallions.
In the deepest part of the lake
there is a fish longer than I am,
shifting under the tremendous weight.
Published in Mirror Northwest, Spring 1976.
The first hard light collects
in low clouds.
Gusts come off the lake
tunneling into dark pines,
along the root of each mountain
a shadow lifting toward the peak.
In this hollow where morning
is all mist and cold air
I walk to the dock,
listen for the voices
of strained boards coming apart.
I imagine what the day is like
for vacationers waking in the city,
loading their station wagons with gear,
children already arguing about seats
on cruisers they know are waiting.
I have come for the same reason
but from farther away,
the Midwest,
where just the word Colorado
is enough to make you wonder.
But life here is the same.
Like everyone I work,
I spend hours crouched on the beach
tugging long rusted cables
to secure the docks.
I am tired early,
guilty of slowing down,
as colors deepen and the sun
breaks over a ridge into my eyes.
Drunks, drowning in their eyes,
ask me where the fishing is good.
I fill their tanks
and tell them by the dam.
I'm not sure.
Late afternoon,
the water blackens.
All the fishermen come in at once
driven by whitecaps and cold rain.
I clean bait, cigarette butts, cans,
out of small rental boats
banging in their stalls like stallions.
In the deepest part of the lake
there is a fish longer than I am,
shifting under the tremendous weight.
Published in Mirror Northwest, Spring 1976.
Working the Skeet House by Jonathan Eastman
Lifting their guns easily
men call for black pigeons
stacked at our feet, each one
indistinct like a face turned away
in shadow, something flat
glimpsed blocks away in the street.
Already imagining arcs in the off-
white sky, they make themselves
steady.
Even the fat are poised.
In a squat house, two of us
too young to be calm and working,
work the skeet, chilled hands
cocking the arm, a bird on its lip,
barely set before the muffled call
from outside, the quick jerk of steel,
pull, pull. Clay flecks spray
like blood, a splattering at high speed.
There is no time to think,
to joke of some other morning.
The men out there haven't the time.
When a stray piece sings in
through the only window
we flinch at its burst,
board splintering behind us
like a deep cracking in the lung.
Some moments we turn
for a split second, eyes
cold and locked, as if to say
you are the man next to me,
the one who is going to die in my place.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1979
and anthologized in Voices From the Interior: Poets of Missouri, 1982.
men call for black pigeons
stacked at our feet, each one
indistinct like a face turned away
in shadow, something flat
glimpsed blocks away in the street.
Already imagining arcs in the off-
white sky, they make themselves
steady.
Even the fat are poised.
In a squat house, two of us
too young to be calm and working,
work the skeet, chilled hands
cocking the arm, a bird on its lip,
barely set before the muffled call
from outside, the quick jerk of steel,
pull, pull. Clay flecks spray
like blood, a splattering at high speed.
There is no time to think,
to joke of some other morning.
The men out there haven't the time.
When a stray piece sings in
through the only window
we flinch at its burst,
board splintering behind us
like a deep cracking in the lung.
Some moments we turn
for a split second, eyes
cold and locked, as if to say
you are the man next to me,
the one who is going to die in my place.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1979
and anthologized in Voices From the Interior: Poets of Missouri, 1982.
Love Poem by Jonathan Eastman
Above, a new ghost
of this kite, your first,
that will not fly,
shudders in a crescendo of gusts, and I
anticipate your eyes falling to meet me--
the long-waited-for fool who
folds your hair into a soft loop
around his finger and coos without a sound.
In a game of nothing
but laughter long ago you ran
as I have back and forth
across this field until the row of poplars
scissored into dark coral against the sky.
Remember the motion?--the motion
of that day suddenly coming closer
as I have--wheeling about you--your lips
parting to tap the strong pull of air.
Published in Midlands, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, Fall 1982.
of this kite, your first,
that will not fly,
shudders in a crescendo of gusts, and I
anticipate your eyes falling to meet me--
the long-waited-for fool who
folds your hair into a soft loop
around his finger and coos without a sound.
In a game of nothing
but laughter long ago you ran
as I have back and forth
across this field until the row of poplars
scissored into dark coral against the sky.
Remember the motion?--the motion
of that day suddenly coming closer
as I have--wheeling about you--your lips
parting to tap the strong pull of air.
Published in Midlands, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, Fall 1982.
Delivering Papers on the Moon by Jonathan Eastman
We'd planned a rendezvous to talk moon
on Maple, or around the corner of your Bel Air
and my Main, and in quiet kitchen compartments
we folded cold Sunday Registers into themselves
as the astronauts unfolded eons from lunar soil.
When we left the sterile gape of TV screen at six
for the verdent scape of neighborhoods
our routes ran through, we dared to compare
ourselves to them--isolated crew--and not
take ordinary steps, but balance
slowed time in each stride and forget laws
of streets and lawns. We grew lighter by increments--
door by door--but no more by shedding Sundays'
weight than by force of imagination.
We exercised this between porches, looming in open
space to transform shadowed gullies to craters,
cement streets to canals, and each other's form
to one beamed down just for our sake--like a deus
ex machina of the mind. So we avoided each other
to save illusion and gazed into living rooms
where someone still up gazed through the same dream
that we were, cold moonlight splashing blue
from television into dark. It was as though
we knew the way in a dream the moon was having
of us that morning. When we glided close once
we only waved and went on, unwilling to break silence
for trivial communication. Later at the pool hall
we engaged in smooth games of call-shot. Full of weight-
lessness, we moved into the penumbra of the table lamp
and stroked miniature planets toward known black holes.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1986.
on Maple, or around the corner of your Bel Air
and my Main, and in quiet kitchen compartments
we folded cold Sunday Registers into themselves
as the astronauts unfolded eons from lunar soil.
When we left the sterile gape of TV screen at six
for the verdent scape of neighborhoods
our routes ran through, we dared to compare
ourselves to them--isolated crew--and not
take ordinary steps, but balance
slowed time in each stride and forget laws
of streets and lawns. We grew lighter by increments--
door by door--but no more by shedding Sundays'
weight than by force of imagination.
We exercised this between porches, looming in open
space to transform shadowed gullies to craters,
cement streets to canals, and each other's form
to one beamed down just for our sake--like a deus
ex machina of the mind. So we avoided each other
to save illusion and gazed into living rooms
where someone still up gazed through the same dream
that we were, cold moonlight splashing blue
from television into dark. It was as though
we knew the way in a dream the moon was having
of us that morning. When we glided close once
we only waved and went on, unwilling to break silence
for trivial communication. Later at the pool hall
we engaged in smooth games of call-shot. Full of weight-
lessness, we moved into the penumbra of the table lamp
and stroked miniature planets toward known black holes.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1986.
Backyard Brother by Jonathan Eastman
You stood up there, you bastard,
with our thug neighbor Brad
pontifically grinning as you lit each marbly green fuse
of boy bombs bought under the counter
over Missouri's border, yearly ordnance of persecution
to be cast in our backyard bay, terraced on three sides,
harboring our white frigate-like monster of a house,
the just-cut lawn at sundown fermenting in the lull
of American country club cocktail time, served
as your range, and my friend Jean and I your younger
brother targets. Had our folks been home
your post-Fourth terrorism would never have stunned
the Martinique calm around the groomed greens and
sand traps but with most decks deserted for scotch and AC,
conditions were a go for your fucking fun, interrupting
only our inane arachnid hunt--bored despots like ourselves unaware
in clefts of the knee-high limestone wall that horseshoed
the sunken lawn like an ancient ampitheater.
The first sizzlers fell near our dirty bare feet,
scaring us as much for their sharp hiss--like some articulate spider's
anger--as for the imminent detonation surging suddenly
into our minds' eyes--all wars, familiar I and II and vague Vietnam
singing anthems in our ringing ears, our nostrils whiffing
the stench of annihilation as death-sweat broke from our backs.
We had to dodge lobbed Cherries, M-80s and Silver Salutes--two,
like two million--we ran helter-skelter among faint mushroom clouds
and concise craters Dad would later whip you for;
we ran like ousted village peasants to escape the Yankee probe;
we ran to the neutral zone of fairway, where artillery
was still to be feared, but mildly because not flesh-ripping, drum
concussing, launched from the dark side of our great country's complacency.
From you then, brother, I learned to run from friendly fire.
with our thug neighbor Brad
pontifically grinning as you lit each marbly green fuse
of boy bombs bought under the counter
over Missouri's border, yearly ordnance of persecution
to be cast in our backyard bay, terraced on three sides,
harboring our white frigate-like monster of a house,
the just-cut lawn at sundown fermenting in the lull
of American country club cocktail time, served
as your range, and my friend Jean and I your younger
brother targets. Had our folks been home
your post-Fourth terrorism would never have stunned
the Martinique calm around the groomed greens and
sand traps but with most decks deserted for scotch and AC,
conditions were a go for your fucking fun, interrupting
only our inane arachnid hunt--bored despots like ourselves unaware
in clefts of the knee-high limestone wall that horseshoed
the sunken lawn like an ancient ampitheater.
The first sizzlers fell near our dirty bare feet,
scaring us as much for their sharp hiss--like some articulate spider's
anger--as for the imminent detonation surging suddenly
into our minds' eyes--all wars, familiar I and II and vague Vietnam
singing anthems in our ringing ears, our nostrils whiffing
the stench of annihilation as death-sweat broke from our backs.
We had to dodge lobbed Cherries, M-80s and Silver Salutes--two,
like two million--we ran helter-skelter among faint mushroom clouds
and concise craters Dad would later whip you for;
we ran like ousted village peasants to escape the Yankee probe;
we ran to the neutral zone of fairway, where artillery
was still to be feared, but mildly because not flesh-ripping, drum
concussing, launched from the dark side of our great country's complacency.
From you then, brother, I learned to run from friendly fire.
Father-Daughter Editorial
by Jonathan Eastman
We are tarry and tiring
Together on the fiery roof
Strolling out one roll of sheet shingle
After another—straight as
Two determined can and hammering
Strategically, sparingly, because
Each nail head must be covered--
A dab from the sticky black maw--
Seams need sealed
And outside edges aligned
And pressed flat for a ten-count
To the metal flange.
Only with her help hefting
I bring up the rolls like oblong anchors
Heavy as her—when did I grow so weak?
When did she grow so strong?
Her endurance overmatches
Memories and costs no whining “Dad”
As the sun too patiently releases us
From being over-and-under baked
And our sparkling sunglass lenses
from their blurring salty baths.
Dusk passes in a fisherman’s daydream
And dark mellows our finish mercifully
but turns calculation to guesswork.
She too is now hard to gage,
so grown and tan and articulate.
Her obvious wish to be done
Ambivalently warring with ardor
To show heart and descend daughter
Onto equal ground with dad
Expressing in this new measure
Love’s earnest sacrifice of self.
by Jonathan Eastman
We are tarry and tiring
Together on the fiery roof
Strolling out one roll of sheet shingle
After another—straight as
Two determined can and hammering
Strategically, sparingly, because
Each nail head must be covered--
A dab from the sticky black maw--
Seams need sealed
And outside edges aligned
And pressed flat for a ten-count
To the metal flange.
Only with her help hefting
I bring up the rolls like oblong anchors
Heavy as her—when did I grow so weak?
When did she grow so strong?
Her endurance overmatches
Memories and costs no whining “Dad”
As the sun too patiently releases us
From being over-and-under baked
And our sparkling sunglass lenses
from their blurring salty baths.
Dusk passes in a fisherman’s daydream
And dark mellows our finish mercifully
but turns calculation to guesswork.
She too is now hard to gage,
so grown and tan and articulate.
Her obvious wish to be done
Ambivalently warring with ardor
To show heart and descend daughter
Onto equal ground with dad
Expressing in this new measure
Love’s earnest sacrifice of self.
Executioners
by Jonathan Eastman
Some sick accident of boy thought
connected the lid of the metal milk box
with The Guillotine, and heads
began to fall on the front stoop,
the tough little dill weed tree
displaying them, each pinned to a branch
like yellow, green and brown ornaments
lidlessly staring with black glass ovals.
Grassland bounty hunter, you left
to scour the unmowed field behind our house
full of summer hoppers that clung to tall stalks--
lazy tobacco-spitters basking in the benign sun
until you cupped them in your dirty palm
and returned to turn them over to me, giant judge
of their capering, catapulting and copulation--
all crimes I refused to excuse. Even armored soldiers
found no quarter, or huge royal personages
of ostentatious abdomen and thorax, no mercy,
because their heads must come off for devouring
minutes in my vain kingdom of monotony.
No one cared about their innocence and surprise
in the gentle scheme of breeze and sweet cud.
Perhaps their massacre on a small scale
saved some future generation from genocide,
but no neighbor crossing lawn or looking out from screen
porch guessed the significance of the constant
clapping of the heavy, sharp-edged lid. Only you and I
knew the pleasure of quelling our nature’s insurrection.