Jon Wolston's Poetry Archive

I remember dreaming I was waking up.
So it’s this bedroom, I thought,
the one with all the tiny chisels
going day and night.
I’d better see who’s outside,
who that is making all that racket.
My eyes struggled
but would not open all the way.

I dreamt I fell asleep again
and was struggling to stay awake.
I failed and
woke up over the kitchen
in a  bathtub
full of unredeemed nasal discharge.
I hope there aren’t too many
insects in here, I remember thinking.

I trip over Yeager again.
Black on black, he’s hard to see.
Lanky Nelly licks Lira’s sour puss.
Black Zeta, our new champion,
launches a charm offensive,
scratching my shin.
Retiring Io the Mouse Girl
slowly endears herself to Nelly
while tear-stained Troy
finds a good stick to chew on.

This news just in from the Chapel:
The Pope takes a bite of the apple!
It’ll give me the jitters
if this fall he twitters,
“Allo! Benedict je m’appelle!”

My roommate “The Quiet Nip”
didn’t like clearing brush
all that much.

Our freshman advisor
had this farm out
in Etna, see?

It all seemed perfectly
natural to yours truly
come October.

I’d forgotten all about
Pearl Harbor and I took
a shine to him.

I guess part of me
was discontented too.

Out on the black lake
alone in the Whaler,
the wind picks up.
Thank God I brought a flashlight
to color the buoys,
tell black from red.

My spray-wet chart
curls up into cold uselessness.
Black shadows of islands
creep past in the night,
all lights extinguished
this time of year.

Off Moon Island I miss a black buoy
enshrouded by the night
and hit a rock.
The Whaler scrapes free,
prop still turning.
I trim the motor
and slow down to a crawl.
Doug calls my cell.
Take your time, EJ, he says.
I’ll be at Walter’s.
He gets it.

Inching along past Diamond Ledge,
invisible to port,
past Perch Island,
invisible to starboard,
I struggle that last mile
to spot the glinting mirror of Squam River,
black as a minnow’s eye
amidst the whitecaps.

It feels grand to stand up,
to brace my knees on the console,
whirl the silver wheel back and forth
to thread its meandering channel,
overtaking each floating oak leaf
in a gentle heat.

The marina’s deserted by now.
I moor the Whaler next to some jet skis,
the water so low this time of year
the dock is a climb.

At dinner with Doug’s wife
we hide our stains–
our palms emblazoned orange
from hauling in the chains.

A vast expanse of sky
dwarfs the land
as bright restless clouds
drift out to sea.

In the next room
Allen toys with wires.
Jane’s off to market.
Brown weeds wag their fingers
in the bay wind.

The septic’s grown over
in no time.
The rose bushes need pruning
again.

At Black Brook
rocks hung on by their fingernails
under the glacier.

Communion in mind,
I drove right past the golf course.
Where were all the carts?

During my third trimester
the Berlin Airlift ended
after 278,926 dogged sorties.

Hundreds of thousands
of cheering West Germans
greeted the first land convoy
in mid-gestation.

And coal arrived every 36 seconds
in the “Easter Parade” of 1949,
as the largest humanitarian aid effort in history
delivered 12,941 tons
in just 24 hours
following my conception.

An old cask of amontillado
floats in Tokyo Bay
while the House of Usher’s melting
down Nagasaki way.

My telltale heart lies beating
on top of Mount Suribach’
dusting up rue Morgue Avenue
and the paper house I watch.