September 2018
The Fallout Shelter
My father came into the house
night after night
caked with mud and sweat,
hiding from the neighbors
his secret plans for survival;
digging the foundation in the backyard,
hammering the frame,
placing each concrete block by hand
while we watched
from the kitchen window,
my sister, my mother, and I,
as the shelter grew like a fabulous
underground root.
Until the day he woke us just before dawn
and we marched through the morning mist,
following like blind moles
after an all-night binge of moonlight
to the carefully concealed entrance
behind the forsythia bushes
next to the ramshackle tool shed
he had painted dull civil defense yellow.
Finally, we emerged
into the suite of cell like rooms,
a bare Edison bulb dangling
from the white washed ceiling,
one room lined with shelves
filled not with the jars of food,
saltine tins, and jugs of water
we half expected, but instead
books of poetry and long-lost novels,
Picasso prints and Rembrandt self-portraits,
my parent’s wedding photo,
and tiny handprints of my sister and me at birth
leaned up against my grandmother’s
hand crocheted lace doily.
In the other room, in place of the radio
and toilet we surely needed to survive
99 years of radioactive fallout,
stood an odd assortment of mid-twentieth
century artifacts rescued from the attic
and an ancient manual Remington typewriter
to write wild manifestos from the past.
As my father showed us each
treasure and trophy, he began to cry,
great gigantic tears pooling
in the corner of his eyes,
then cascading down his cheeks
like a hieroglyph of runaway regrets
until my mother kissed his hand
and led him silently back above ground.
Later, the bomb shelter
became our playhouse,
even long into our teens –
a place to sneak down with our dates
and fumble in the dank darkness,
lighting candles and gawking
at my father’s ruined imagination
like some subterranean tea party—
a place to savor scones and sonnets
and once every century perhaps
scent the perfumed night air.
Previously appeared in Main Street Rag. Fall, 2011.
My father came into the house
night after night
caked with mud and sweat,
hiding from the neighbors
his secret plans for survival;
digging the foundation in the backyard,
hammering the frame,
placing each concrete block by hand
while we watched
from the kitchen window,
my sister, my mother, and I,
as the shelter grew like a fabulous
underground root.
Until the day he woke us just before dawn
and we marched through the morning mist,
following like blind moles
after an all-night binge of moonlight
to the carefully concealed entrance
behind the forsythia bushes
next to the ramshackle tool shed
he had painted dull civil defense yellow.
Finally, we emerged
into the suite of cell like rooms,
a bare Edison bulb dangling
from the white washed ceiling,
one room lined with shelves
filled not with the jars of food,
saltine tins, and jugs of water
we half expected, but instead
books of poetry and long-lost novels,
Picasso prints and Rembrandt self-portraits,
my parent’s wedding photo,
and tiny handprints of my sister and me at birth
leaned up against my grandmother’s
hand crocheted lace doily.
In the other room, in place of the radio
and toilet we surely needed to survive
99 years of radioactive fallout,
stood an odd assortment of mid-twentieth
century artifacts rescued from the attic
and an ancient manual Remington typewriter
to write wild manifestos from the past.
As my father showed us each
treasure and trophy, he began to cry,
great gigantic tears pooling
in the corner of his eyes,
then cascading down his cheeks
like a hieroglyph of runaway regrets
until my mother kissed his hand
and led him silently back above ground.
Later, the bomb shelter
became our playhouse,
even long into our teens –
a place to sneak down with our dates
and fumble in the dank darkness,
lighting candles and gawking
at my father’s ruined imagination
like some subterranean tea party—
a place to savor scones and sonnets
and once every century perhaps
scent the perfumed night air.
Previously appeared in Main Street Rag. Fall, 2011.
© 2018 Michael Minassian
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