Students, Dinkytown
I tore up linoleum, painted the floor
uncovered golden yellow, sewed
curtains white and sheer
for the tall windows.
You studied; on grey formica set up
your Smith Corona, typing steadily
towards your diploma.
The caretaker scolded me —
not my linoleum to throw away,
who did I think I was,
good question.
You on time, in cap and gown.
Me painting the chair red.
Late Book of Three
Three ewes in the low pasture,
wide world, sunny, expanding —
while here inside,
A pharmacy owns the dining room
table, and her bed, in cherry-red sheets,
takes over the livingroom.
Couldn't we leave all this behind,
take a little meander this morning,
not for long —
As we drive along she spins a tale.
The thread begins somewhere
in Ohio and stretches east.
A friend of a friend is in the story,
and who she divorced and what he invented
and how her dad made chowder with
salt pork and every turn she takes has a view
of the world, as we follow the current,
the tidal river.
From high on the bridge we look down on sails,
white and dreaming of late sunshine,
of winter mooring,
of old Maine.
We circle the fort, drive on
to Searsport, where we stop, shake open
the map. The endless outline of coastline
unraveling makes her think of the slow killing
inside her skull. Brains have lots of coastline too,
she says and we agree.
Slowly we drift through town,
pondering what we store,
safe in the crenelated fortress
of brain, and what we cut loose.
She wants it all, all held
within reach. She wants the news,
and the layer under the news,
and the tangled goods in boxes arrived
from the lives of all her dead.
And she wants the stories of generations,
the rumors of love, and the three ewes
in her pasture. She wants to go home
and lie down. Sure, we say, and we turn
and go back over the bridge, look down
on the dull salt flats. It’s such a tender day,
soft and bright, seeming to love us —
promising only the sun in our laps,
colors that deepen, this moment
and that.
Alice Duggan cares for gardens, public and private, and writes poems. Her work has been published in Sleetmagazine.com, Waterstone, Blue Earth Review, Plainsongs, MoonJournal, and Puckerbrush Review. She won a place in the Loft's Mentorship Program, which she recommends to any writer. The astonishing editors of Sleet Magazine have nominated her poem, A Brittle Thing, for a Pushcart Prize.