January 2025
Bio Note: I am a retired factory worker, musician, and poet living in Eastern Tennessee near the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. In addition to my passion for poetry, I feed backyard squirrels and take long walks in the mountains. My poetry has been published in various journals, including I-70 Review, Chiron Review, and Impspired Magazine.
New Year’s Day
Max curls up by the armchair, stretching, as I
glance up at the clock on the wall. I can hear the stir
of dry winter leaves—the old furnace cough—
like an old man’s wheeze. And the oil lamp staggers
a dead man’s waltz, dressing the room in a scented
plume of cedar. How the empty streets appear ghostly
pale, and the drunken clamor of far-flung celebration,
soon to reach its climax, is more distant now than
the Milky Stars. Eleven-fifty-three: bolero-stepping
to the kitchen sink, I open a flask of cider champagne
pouring it into a Tupperware mug. I toast to Max
before slouching again, but Max is slightly snoring,
dreaming of green-leafy days when his feline world
was a captain’s car on The City of New Orleans:
Louis Armstrong, jazz on the rocks, and a little Elvis, too.
Roy
Daybreak and the clicking of the gas-top stove.
The old man, now dressed, opens his day
to a pantomime play of shadows, drifting
like smoke along the smooth linoleum floor.
Outside, a clatter from the postbox cranny:
the mailman tosses a quick hello, which jostles
Roy in his new lounge chair, the blue screen
blurred in the backdrop of dreams.
Dusk and fireflies, the tires against gravel;
a friendly porchlight blooms by the bush:
the smile, the shake, the gift of juicy grub, sweet
honeyed ham and homemade soup.
Nighttime, bed sweats, the muscadine trellis, pale-
green ghosts of a long-faded war. The red-
soaked beach, the sheer cliff climbs, the heavy
vintage, ripe upon the vine.
Closing Day
In the low-key light of the kitchen,
the hand-brushed, century-old cabinets
are the cold, dreary cousins of their glossy
online mugshots, the painted doors
chipped, with a thick yellowish glaze over
plain piney shelves, the must-buy scent
of an antique mall. I see the previous owner
placing her dainty china cups on the under-
cabinet hanger wheel, sixties-built
with small brass hooks to hang
each lonely cup. And up the stairs,
the hardwood floors of Roosevelt:
pinewood planks, hammered down with
steel nails, when men were men, without
the aid of nail guns, the grit and grime
of four generations trapped between
the floorboards. Behind the sink, the faux-
ceramic Masonite board in Bel Air blue
harkens back to Lawrence Welk, Bill Black
and Red Skelton, the residues of D-Day
painted over thirty times—the story of America.
And if by chance these walls could speak,
I’d love to hear the tattler’s tales: the thoughts
behind the color schemes, why she left
and why the cats are gone.
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