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 Sharon
Mesmer is a Fulbright Senior Specialist candidate and
rand recipient of two poetry fellowships of New York
Foundation for the Arts. The Virgin Formica (Hanging Loose) and Annoying
Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books) were published in 2008.
Eddie Boback's Dead
"Eddie Boback's dead,"
my mother told me.
I think heaven must be a kind of
perfectly turned out waiting room
upstairs of a roiling good time
just within hearing
and God a kind of
Understanding
for all those listening
poised not for all he offers, but
for all that may one day
be coming.
It gets harder and harder
as we get older
to keep our true selves uncovered.
So we need to stay naked
in order to remember.
Eddie Boback's dead,
my mother told me,
but what she really meant was
"You're starting menopause."
Summer, Elizabeth Street
Into a green-gold tumbler of light
along the side of the church
we surged,
a scourge upon the fading strains
of the Litany to Our Lady.
Tossing red beanies
into prairie air,
we ran with eyes closed,
past RoJo's,
Patka funeral home,
and the ochre two-flat where the Rybicki family lived,
its color a refract of noon sun
into Mexico.
All colors angled out that day
into a low-grade version of eternity
that would span three green months
and end in a Rambler
in the parking lot of a department store
across the little airport
the day before Labor Day.
And in the evenings,
there was nothing on TV
(this was before "The Partridge Family").
And so summer -
that one summer -
was swallowed
by the cool of the Sherman Park tavern before noon,
the bra models in the Sears catalogue,
and the girls from "Scooby-Doo."
Good Sleepin' Weather
Cold air
everywhere
and the impoverished edge
of anxiety
of kitchen knives
that thrive
under roofs the color
of horses' hooves.
After shopping at Zayre
we walked back to the Rambler
and dark was the screen
of the outdoor theater
where earlier they'd lowered a whore
from a helicopter.
"Man," Dad said,
"this is what you call
good sleepin' weather."
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