April 14, 2014

“Eimer's Star”
by Megan Rheaume-Brand


It has been the end for some time
-unending velvety darkness caresses
my bulging eyes; hands and
skin read new surroundings.

Wind whisks across my baby face hairs,
and miniscule fuzzy beings creep
around my wiggling bare toes.
I imagine gnashing teeth and gritty
poison tickle my blood stream.

I shuffle on my way, trying to be calm,
until I stumble face first over a massive thing.
To my heels, the Thing feels a mild annoyance
-some idiotic dense obstacle in my path.
But to my hands, it sends an ominous message.

Like a pebble stuck in my throat,
I am too numbed to dare breath
because I realize it is alive.
Its clammy paws reaching, reaching
because it is as blind as me.
Its nails scrape the ground
as it drags its massive body towards me.
Rubbery antlers pierce my outstretched
pleading hands, leaving sticky ragged holes.
The Thing has taken part of my flesh,
For this I will take its entire hide!
I dig past the long wiry hair with a mad frenzy
and rip open its lacy seams at the backbone.
Viscous goo oozes out and pools over
and around my feet; I scream while it wails.

The Thing and I, a known being, begin
a tug of war with the unyielding flesh.
I sink my teeth into its sinewy wires,
snagging my lips; as the hide rips open,
giant grimy bugs scratch their way out.

Without its bug-infested hide, I can feel
the Thing shrink to no bigger than a lamb,
no more ferocious with its shriveled claws.
Its cool breaths spray fluid across my
triumphant face; it squeaked one sorrowful
indignation, but I continued on my now Darkened way.


“Written for Jeff Eaton’s Creative Writing class.”


* * * * * * * * * *

“Sweet Peas”
By Ron Parkinson

Rudy is dead…milkweed pods burst in his garden.
Rudy is dead…tamarack thrusts into his fields.
Lincoln called this the great Northern Swamplands,
gave it away. Rudy claimed a finger, a place
to cough his lungs clear of memories, mustard gas.
Wrenched a garden from this land, chopped, pried,
dragged, finally the top twelve inches clear,
not knowing of the moraine, another 300 feet
of boulders shoving up from below.

This shallow grave is his root cellar, a poor crop
of potatoes, cabbage, rutabagas. Chicken wire kept out
the rabbits, does, but couldn’t stop frosts that killed
soon as September, blizzards that smothered late in May.
What grew best was sweet peas. I found a picture,
Rudy standing in his sweet peas,
long shadows pressed against his fields,
black clouds sagging with snow.
You couldn’t force a living from this land,
but it took the next generation to admit it.

When the birds grew silent, winds moaned
against the swamp, Rudy would bend to his Atwater Kent,
strain to hear voices from Detroit, Chicago…anywhere.
Once he handed Mother a bouquet of sweet peas
in a baking powder can, glanced at her face,
studied his shoe laces, returned to the woods.
Early March, when the crust on the snow could be trusted,
Dad would slide a toboggan full of flour, carrots, onions
under the pines to those lonely men, sometimes
have to straighten frozen arms, legs, bend
a fetal body for the long slide back. Dad said
if you got there before the thaw, they didn’t smell.

Rudy was smiling in the picture. Lacy blossoms
of blush pink, dusty blue, brushing against his cheeks,
panties of the women he’d never met.
When they brought in the fire lane, Rudy got
a bicycle, peddled to town to pull weeds
from the graves of the shackers like him, lay a bouquet
of sweet peas against each wooden marker.
Fifty years these sweet peas have fought for sunlight,
fierce as a sow bear with cubs. Leapt
upon intruders, clawed them down, devoured them.
I’m the only one left who knows the sweet peas.
Soon there’ll only be the sweet peas.

[See April 6's posting for a brief statement about Ron Parkinson.]